Dan Patterson is on the show. He’ll talk about his experience training Sudanese media makers in Egypt and how mobile phones are changing the world.

MP3

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the 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

Today’s guest: Dan Patterson, technologist and journalist

Headlines

Did I say “forever”? I meant, “not really”: The Next Web reports Snapchat agreed to a “Consent decree” with the U.S. FTC over a database leak and misrepresentation of how the service stored user messages. Snapchat had said photos and videos would “disappear forever,” although there were many ways to work around that. Snapchat changed its privacy policy, app description and in-app notifications. Snapchat’s agreement with the FTC requires that it create a privacy program, subject itself to independent monitoring for 20 years, and stop misrepresenting how it handles user data.

Next stop – Head of the WORLD! Reuters reports that Samsung replaced the head of its mobile design team, Chang Dong-hoon, who offered to resign last week. Lee Min-hyouk will take over the role. Chang will focus on the Design Strategy Team, which is responsible for long-term design across all Samsung’s businesses. Lee has been a rising star at Samsung, becoming the company’s youngest senior executive in 2010 for his role in designing the Galaxy series of phones. 

Can’t wait to see the comments section: Reuters also reports more than 100 technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon signed a letter to the U.S. FCC opposing proposed open Internet guidelines that would allow commercially reasonable traffic discrimination. The letter called the rules a ‘grave threat to the Internet’ and called for a delay in their proposal. A meeting is set for May 15th which would make the proposal official, and open the guidelines to a public comment period.

Mario figurine, anyone? Ars Technica reports Nintendo plans to release a low-priced game console targeted towards “emerging markets.” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata spoke to the press following an investor briefing Wednesday, but didn’t give details on the new hardware or what countries it would be released in. Nintendo also announced “the Nintendo Figurine Platform” featuring collectible toys that share data with a variety of Nintendo games using NFC.

I would like all the players to wear pink: The Verge reports Epic Games announced the next Unreal Tournament will be completely free and developed in the open. The development will be lead by senior Epic Games programmers, but anyone can contribute. The company plans to use forums and Twitch Streams as well as a GitHub repository. The company plans to make money off a forthcoming online marketplace for user-generated mods and content. 

Thanks, I think? Re/code reports executives from Comcast and Time Warner Cable appeared before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Most of the questions asked what the benefit to the consumers would be. Comcast replied the combined company would deliver a significantly improved customer experience, but not lower prices. Rep. Blake Farenthold of Texas, noted that the combined company would serve 91% of Hispanic households, and asked for assurances the company would not discriminate against non Comcast-NBC spanish-language programming.

Move over, Twitter: The Next Web reports Japanese messaging app Line reported revenues have increased 223% over the past year and 19% over the past quarter. Line has more than 420 million registered users and makes half its revenues from in-app purchases related to some 30 games connected tot he messaging app. Line also makes money from advertisers who can push messages to followers who have asked for them. Paul McCartney for instance has more followers on Line than on Twitter. The company has been piloting flash sales through the app. And also stickers. They sell virtual stickers. 

News From You

Angryfuture submitted the top story on the subreddit today from Tweaktown, which I also found reported on Ars Technica. Lawyers for Mediabridge Products who make routers, sent a letter to a redditor called trevely Monday threatening to sue unless he deleted a negative review of a Medialink Wireless Router from Amazon. Mediabridge’s attorney, Neal Jacobs says trevely’s review was a “campaign to damage, discredit, defame and libel Mediabridge.”

toddkam posted the Business Week article about a group from Université Laval in Quebec who won Shell’s Eco-marathon Americas competition with a car that achieved 2,824 miles per gallon. If that impresses you, it shouldn’t. Last year the same school achieved 3,587 miles per gallon. The car, which competed in the prototype class of the competition has a teardrop shape, and is not built for comfort or speed.

Spydrchick submitted the Gawker story that a band from LA called Vulfpeck racked up $20,000 in royalties from Spotify thanks to their album Sleepify. The band asked fans to stream the entirely silent album through the night as they slept, racking up plays for Vulfpeck that paid $.007 cents per track. Fans could generate $3 a night for the band and enough nights and enough fans added up to $20K. Spotify spokesman Graham James said, “Sleepify seems derivative of John Cage’s work.” Spotify has also made the band remove the album for violating terms of service. Whether they’ll get paid a check remains to be seen.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://danpatterson.com/2014/04/28/sudan-stories-language-guns-phones/

http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2014/23.aspx#.U2vHKq1dXA6

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/23/mobile-reading-revolution-unesco-study-phones-africa-subcontinent

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/m4ed/mobile-reading/reading-in-the-mobile-era/

http://www.cp-africa.com/2014/05/03/gallup-africa-continues-going-mobile/

https://www.undpegov.org/mgov-primer.html

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/africa-in-focus/posts/2014/04/18-women-mobile-technology-maret-rakotondrazaka

Pick of the Day:  Todoist via Ashish Bogawat

Ashish Bogawat has our pick of the day: the task list management app Todoist. “With a pretty minimalistic interface, the app can be as simple or complex as you want – no mean feat in this day & age. That it has native clients available for virtually every platform out there, as well as offline mode in the web app is just icing on the cake.”

Friday’s guest: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Pelle Eklund and I talk about whether proposed net neutrality regulations are already slowing investment and why an LG fridge that text messages you is actually a step backward for tech.

MP3

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the 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

Today’s guest: Eklund, founder of hockeybuzz.com

Headlines

The Verge reports Evernote announced an expanded partnership with LinkedIn for better address book organization and improved business card scanning in the iOS app. Evernote’s scanner will pull information from LinkedIn as well as add time and place of the contact. LinkedIN will start directing folks to Evernote for card scanning rather than its own CardMunch app which is shutting down July 11th. 

GigaOm notes Google is buying StackDriver, which monitors cloud workload, especially for customers of Amazon Web Services. Google has been trying to build up its own cloud platform to compete with Amazon. 

Most of you will not care at all that Apple’s VP of worldwide communications, Katie Cotton is retiring after more than 18 years at the company But this is big news for journalists who have deal with Apple PR. Apple told Recode Cotton wants to spend more time with her children. 

ZDNet reports that HP is the latest to get on the open source OpenStack cloud platform. HP will invest $1 billion in cloud computing and add openstack in 20 data centers over the next 18 months. HP is joining NASA, Rackspace, IBM and others in promoting Openstack and running your own private cloud as an alternative to the Amazon and Google’s of the world and their public clouds. Insert “get off my cloud” joke here for those over 30. Convert to ‘cloud rap’ subgenre reference for others.

TechCrunch reports Google is buying Appetas, a site that helps restaurants build their own websites, even integrating services like grubHub and OpenTable as well as social networks in an easy cost-effective manner. Google plans to shut the service down. 

Ars Technica reports Nintendo— oh Nintendo. Wii U sales missed fiscal year projections by 80,000 to come in at 2.8 million. Nintendo went into the fiscal year expecting to sell 9 million. Hey but the 3DS sol 12.2 million units still below the 13.5 million projected. Nintendo also lost money. Lots and lots of money. ¥46.4 billion, the third straight annual loss. Hey but Nintendo has three things going for them. Mario, Zelda and no debt!

CNET reports on Huawei’s launch of the Ascen P7 smartphone. It’s a 5-inch Android phone with 1920×1080 display running Huawei’s Emotion interface. But the big feature is the 8-megapixel front-facing camera. Yep. Front-facing, rear one has 13 mehgapixels. But 8 megapixels should give you some nice high-res selfies. Just in time for selfies to become passé. Which is why Huawei made up a new word to describe group selfies like Ellen would take at an awards cermonies. Groufies. Huawei would like you to call those groufies. The phone will be available initially in June in dozens of European and Asian countries for a price of 449 euros (US$625) unlocked. 

The Verge passes along data from a UN ITU report that the Internet will have 3 billion active users, about 40% of the world’s population, by the end of this year. Active means they used the Internet once in the past three months, not just had access to it. Three out of four people in Europe will be using the internet by the end of the year, compared to two out of three in the Americas and one in three in Asia and the Pacific. In Africa, nearly one in five people will be online by the end of the year. Mobile phone subscriptions should reach 7 billion and mobile internet subscriptions should make up 2.3 billion.

News From You

spsheridan had our top story of today on the subreddit. BGR reports Al Franken, my friends, has made a video promoting a website called noslowlane.com. The US Senator is trying to rally opposition to the FCC regulations that would allow comercially reasonable traffic prioritization. He uses Google Video vs. YouTube as an example of the open Internet working to make a scrappy up and comer defeat a behemoth incumbent. ‘Cause Google Video sucked and YouTube was better and so Google bought YouTube and killed Google Video and YouTube might have never got off the ground if it had to pay commercially reasonable video rates to a bunch of ISPs. 

tm204 pointed out that App.net has good news. They’re profitable and self-sustaining thanks to paid subscriptions for the social network. App.net will continue to operate normally on an indefinite basis.Without any employees. Yeah the bad news is to be profitable App.net can’t have any full time employees, including the founders. So they’re all gone. The company will get by with contracters and will be open sourcing a larger and larger percentage of the App.net codebase. 

tekkyn00b gave us the Verge story that Russia’s President signed a law requiring any blogger with more than 3,000 readers to register with the Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media agency. The law covers microblogs and social networks as well. Registered writers will be responsible for fact-checking and are forbidden from harming the reputation of a person or group or hiding or falsifying “information of general interest.” Writers will also be required to publish their surname, initials, and email address.

MikePKennedy submitted the Verge story that the US Navy announced the Navy eReader Device, yep, abbreviated as NeRD. It’s an e-ink tablet with no Internet, no removable storage, and come preloaded with 300 books that will never change. The Navy doesn’t allow devices like iPads which have cameras and emit signals that could be detected.

And here’s some breaking good news ABOUT calendars! It only took 90 minutes to fund the kickstarter to bring Upcoming.org back to life. Remember Upcoming? The terrific arts and tech calendar site that yahoo bought in 2005 and then ignored and then sunsetted in 2007? Well Yahoo allowed the Andy Baio, the sites original creator to buy back the domain, and then today, 90 minutes after he launched the kickstarter it was funded. Jennie, who writes up the calendar each day is VERY happy about this. YAY!

Discussion Section Links: 

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527006/talk-of-an-internet-fast-lane-is-already-hurting-some-startups/

http://bgr.com/2014/05/07/senator-franken-net-neutrality-campaign/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27308869

Pick of the Day:  Google Keep via Vance McAllister

Vance McAllister has our pick of the day: Tom, as you might guess, my pick is a Google app, but one that tends to fly under the radar despite doing one simple thing very well. Although I am a dedicated Evernote user, I have been finding myself using Keep more and more without any overlap. Whereas Evernote is my digital file cabinet, I use Keep as digital Post-It Notes. It is fast and easy to pull up on a phone or computer to jot down a name, number, create a quick list, or anything that I need to save for later. Then, just like a Post-It Note, that information is usually used and discarded. Anything important enough to keep still goes into Evernote, but I am not cluttering Evernote up with these small, temporary bits and pieces. The Keep interface on Android and iOS is clean, simple and attractive, and there is even a standalone Chrome App for Windows and Mac in addition to the web interface. Since it is free and available on every platform, I encourage folks to give it a go! Vance, from the increasingly hot California desert

Thursday’s guest: Dan Patterson, technology journalist

Allison Sheridan joins me to talk about the rising maker revolution, open source hardware, and Google’s advance on the classroom.

MP3

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the 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

Today’s Guest: Allison Sheridan of podfeet.com and The NosillaCast

Headlines:

CNET reports Google and Intel announced more than 20 new devices running Google’s Chrome OS on Intel’s Bay Trail and Haswell processors. PC makers: Acer, Asus, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, LG, and Toshiba will all make the devices. Lenovo had their own Chrome OS announcement including a 64-bit Bay Trail powered Yoga Chromebook. Samsung was notably absent. All announced devices use conflict-free metals in their construction. I haven’t seen this many non Wintel PCs since the OS/2 Warp days. 

Remember we said the jury awarded Apple $120 million in the latest Apple-Samsung patent dustup? Well surprise, suprise, Samsung is plans to challenge the verdict as “unsupported by evidence,” according to Bloomberg. Samsung will tell the court they would rather pay a lower amount, according to Samsung lawyer John Quinn. Zero. They would like to pay zero please. Both companies will also likely pursue bans on each others devices. Want to know why Samsung and Apple are at each others throats like this? Go read Kurt Eichenwald’s excellent in depth writeup at vanityfair.com.

CNET reports Microsoft sent out invites to the press for a “small gathering” on the morning of May 20th in New York City. It could mean Microsoft just wants a few of their favorite journalists to have brunch, or it could mean Microsoft is being clever and wants to announce a smaller Microsoft Surface tablet.

CNET reports Flux, once a part of the secretive Google X labs has raised $8 million in Series A funding. Flux is developing and testing its collaborative-design software for the building construction industry. The idea is to help build sustainable structures that reduce energy consumption. It hopes to launch the product in early 2015.

Gigaom reports Dropcam will launch a line of sensors called Tabs, that can tell when a door or window has been opened as well as detect movement. The Tabs work with the dropcam cameras and will sell for $29 starting in August. The cameras themselves will also get an upgrade in August, being able to use the cloud to tell when a human is in its view and eventually tell which human that is. More details to follow at the GigaOm Structure Conference June 18th and 19th.

The Next Web reports Google Maps for Android and iOS got an update with several new features including the ability to tell you which lane to be in so you don’t miss your exit off the highway, as well as avoid high traffic lanes! Maps also gets an easier way to take an alternate route while driving as well integration of Uber alongside other transit options. 

TechCrunch reports Google is rolling out a new Classroom app which uses Docs, Drive and Gmail to make it easier to hand out track and accept student assignments. The system is free and Ad-free but will be invite only to start. Educators can apply to the preview program at https://classroom.google.com/signup and the first group of testers will be notified in about a month. 

News From You: 

AtomicSpaceGun posted the Gizmodo article about a series of email exchanges revealed by Al Jazeera News between the US NSA director at the time Keith Alexander and executives from Google. The exchanges from 2012 were obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request. The meetings indicate Google along with Microsoft, HP, AMD, Apple, and others were working on cybersecurity issues such as efforts to secure BIOS on enterprise platforms and participation in “classified threat briefings.” The meetings were part of seomthing called the Enduring Security Framework and don’t seem to have any relationship to programs revealed by Edward Snowden’s leaks. 

the_corley sent us the Engadget story that Dropbox closed down many of their shared links after realizing a security flaw could unintentionally expose those documents. Apparently Dropbox was not doing anything about blocking referrer links from being logged. Let’s say Allison sent me a document via a dropbox link that had a link to apple.com in it. Then I open that document from the dropbox link and click on the link to Apple.com. The sysadmins at Apple could look int heir logs and see that someone was referred to their site from the dropbox link. Then they could access that same document using that link. Dropbox says they have patched the problem.

HouseofBrick had the most popular new story on subreddit today. Ars Technica reports that a ban on drones announced by the US National Park Services does not appear use a legal basis that could apply to drones. Instead of creating a new regulation and holding the public comment that usually comes with it, the Park Service cited an existing regulation that restricts “delivering or retrieving a person or object by parachute, helicopter, or other airborne means.” So no riding your drones into or out of Yosemite people!

And TVSEgon posted the Gizmodo story of a man who accidentally received a $400,000 unmanned aerial vehicle delivered to his door by UPS. Not by drone. Reddit user Seventy_Seven. said he called UPS who said it was up to him whether to keep it or not. A card in the box said it belonged to NOAA Aircraft Operations Center in Tampa, Florida, whom Seventy_seven said would get a call next.

Pick of the Day: Goodreader via Russell Manthy

Russell Manthy has the pick of the day: “We have been using iPads for business for about two and a half years now and the key tool we have found is Goodreader. As there is no native file manager on the iPad you need a way to manage, present and share files. After trying a number of others we have found that Goodreader is the best for what we do. It handles almost any standard file type (PDF, MS Office, video, images, etc.) and allows you to manage and display them in a manner very similar to the typical file manager on the desktop. It populates from cloud services like Dropbox, Box, the Microsoft cloud service and a variety of others. Documents can also be added from email attachments and it links to your email to send documents from the app. One other really nice feature is that it has a fairly robust markup tool for PDF files. We utilize this in meetings quite a bit when the iPad is connected to a projector. It allows for real time markups and speeds the consensus building on projects.”

Tomorrow’s Guest: Eklund of hockeybuzz.com