Iyaz Akhtar is on the show today. We’ll talk about why AT&T is genius for buying DirecTV, and what YouTube would do with Twitch. Also there’s a new big dinosaur.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Iyaz Akhtar, senior associate editor at CNET.com, and podcaster on the GFQNetwork
Headlines
Variety reported Sunday that their sources say Google’s YouTube has reached a deal to buy online streaming video service Twitch for more than $1 billion. The all-cash offer is expected to be announced anytime. Twitch’s most popular video streams involve video games, including live gameplay and esports coverage. Twitch claims more than 45 million monthly users. It consumes 1.35% of all bandwidth in North America at peak times, just a little more than HBO Go.
Reuters reports Google acquired Divide, a company that helps corporations manage devices like smartphones that are owned by the employees. In a post on Divide’s website, the company said it would join Google’s Android team. Divide’s app separates a device owner’s own data from corporate data, making it easier for businesses to manage multiple types and brands of devices.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich told Reuters at MakerFaire that Intel’s next-gen Broadwell processors will ship in time to be used in computers sold during the holiday season, though it might be tough for them to be in time for back-to-school rush. The chips were delayed because of setbacks in a new manufacturing process instituted last October.
Recode reports that “people familiar with both companies” tell them Twitter is considering a deal to buy Soundcloud. The Berlin-based SoundCloud has 250 million users who upload and share audio clips. Twitter launched a Music app last year but killed it in March. Soundcloud for its part might benefit from Twitter’s ad-selling experience.
The Telegraph reports Facebook has added an ask button to relationship status on profile pages. Users who leave their relationship status blank may receive inquiries about it from anyone who can see their profile. Facebook has been adding the Ask button to several elements of the profile section like employer and phone number. There is no way to to turn the ask button off.
Tom would never let Iyaz do dinosaur stories on TNT, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. Boing Boing passes along the discovery of the massive species of dinosaur. It’s just a tad bigger than Argentinasaur, the previous biggest species, but cooler than that, they found a whole herd of them!
News From You
spsheridan submitted the USA Today report that AT&T announced Sunday it plans to acquire DirecTV for $48.5 billion of stock and cash at $95 a share. As a comparison, Comcast is offering $45 billion to buy TWC. Kevin Smithen, an analyst at Macquarie called the deal financial engineering, pointing out the acquisition would bolster AT&T’s free cash flow. Although DirecTV makes money its subscriber growth has slowed. AT&T’s U-Verse TV service has 5.7 million subscribers DirecTV has 20.25 million subscribers in the US.
KAPT_Kipper submitted the 9to5 Mac writeup of Korea Times report that Apple and Samsung are in talks designed to end patent disputes between the two companies. FOSS patents Florian Mueller thinks a settlement could be reached “very soon.” Apple recently agreed to end disputes with Google and work together on patent reform.
metalfreak gave us the ITWorld story on the US Department of Justice obtaining Grand Jury indictments against five Chinese military officials for obtaining information on nuclear plant design, solar manufacturing and other secrets. China denied the allegations and called them, “made up.” Its the first time the US has filed charges of corporate cyber spying against specific officials of foreign governments.
And tekkyn00b posted the verge article on scientists proposing a particle collider that could turn an 80-year old theory on turning light into matter, into reality. The system would work by shooting high-energy photons into a field of other photons, turning some of the massless particles into an electron and positron, AKA matter with mass.
Discussion Section Links: DirectAT&T
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/19/5730854/att-can-bail-on-merger-if-directv-loses-nfl-sunday-ticket
http://recode.net/2014/05/19/att-says-it-wants-to-sell-web-tv-too/
http://recode.net/2014/05/18/att-starts-telling-washington-why-its-directv-deal-should-pass/
Pick of the day: YouMail via Jake Lackey from Fresno, CA
Hey Tom,
I just wanted to suggest a Pick of the day of YouMail for Android and IOS. I have been using YouMail since my first Blackberry phone years ago and I’m pretty surprised i don’t ever hear anybody ever talking about this app. I didn’t want to have to pay the 2.99 a month for visual voice mail from Verizon and started using YouMail which is totally free. YouMail will automatically forward your voice mails to their service which you upload your contacts to and download the app for your phone. Then on our phone you can see a list of who called and play their message from the app, rather than having to play the messages 1 by 1 and wondering who called. You can skip around and only listen to the messages which you think are important. It even has a spam folder for the messages that you don’t ever want to listen to.
You can set up individual voice mail greetings from a list of suggested downloads from the site or use what they call “smart greeting” which will answer the voice mail with, “hello *insert name here*, *user* cant come to the phone right now please leave a message” like a personal assistant would. Most people who call are shocked that my voice mail knows who is calling me. You can also get transcript for your voice mails and save them as MP3′s and share them. which works great when the doctors office calls and i can just forward the message to my wife, who takes care of that stuff.
I am strictly an Android user and not 100% sure how well it works on iPhone but i know with Android it integrates with the call list and you can play the messages directly from the recent call list on your phone rather than actually opening the app.
You do have to sign up with YouMail at Youmail.com and get an account which is free then you can customize the many different ways you would like your voice mail to be handled. I have unlimited data and not sure how much data this uses on a regular basis but is one of first apps i always download no matter what phone i am using. There is a paid option for this which is only 5 dollars of month which is not required but gives you a ton for features as opposed to the 3 dollars for the Verizon version which gives you nothing extra.
I couldn’t explain everything about this app you will have to just check it out to see how convenient this is. I figured that there are quite a few of your listeners that will get lots of use out of it like i do.
Tuesday’s guest: Lamarr Wilson