Pie In the Sky

April 29, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Domino’s revealed its latest update for the iPad last week, and unlike most app updates, this one had a press release. The updated software now includes a realistic 3D Pizza Builder photo animation that lets you build your pie from the crust up. The app depicts your dinner as a work in progress as you tap through your order, from picking a crust style to the showers of toppings raining down as you crown your achievement with meatballs and banana peppers.

The high-rez food photography is brilliant and (at least for the waistline) evil. Those tasty-looking pizza pictures will probably inspire a few customers to tap the back button and increase the size of their pizza, add more toppings or experiment with various combinations they wouldn’t normally consider. As with previous versions of the Domino’s app for Android, iOS and Kindle, as well as its website, you can use the Domino’s Tracker progress bar to follow your order as it gets made, baked, boxed up and delivered.

But Domino’s is not the only national pizza chain with its own app. Papa John’s has Android and iOS apps to complement its mobile website. With the apps, you can tap together your order (which has its own pizza pictures), set certain pizza combinations aside as repeatable favorites for even faster ordering — and pay by credit card through the phone.

Don’t forget Pizza Hut, which made headlines a few months ago with its prototype pizza-ordering table. The Hut has its own mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone. You can also get an app for your Xbox 360, although TiVo beat the Xbox by about five or six years when it came to ordering pizza through the TV.

The dedicated mobile apps usually offer more streamlined experiences than just using the mobile web on your phone, and can do other things like send push alerts for coupons and special offers. According to The Wall Street Journal, about 40 percent of Domino’s sales come from online ordering, so there is a significant user base driving the digital delivery.

But are you one of those pizza purists who dislikes the somewhat-predictable taste of national chain pizza? (Yes, New Yorkers, we are talking to you.) If your preferred local pizza joint does not have its own app or site where you can place your order, see if you can find them on Seamless or GrubHub, sites that provide online ordering from a huge directory of restaurants in cities across the country. You may be able to get your favorite order sent right to your door — all without having to spell your name on the phone or actually talk to anybody but the delivery person.

Episode Links

PTJ 90: Pump Up the Volume and Pump That Bass

April 24, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

Nothing drives me crazier than seeing folks sporting humongous, power-hungry headphones directly connected to their personal media players and smartphones. Actually, if they wear those headphones OVER a ski hat that’s keeping their ears warm, that would make me twice as crazy.

A few weeks ago I overheard a colleague of mine at the day job complaining that as much as he liked the way his Beyerdynamic headphones looked, they didn’t sound anywhere near as good as advertised. They also drained the battery on his phone painfully fast because he needed to keep the volume at full to get a decent level.

Turns out he was using the 250 Ohm version of his headphone model instead of the iPod-friendly 32 Ohm version. I could have wasted hours explaining how impedance makes a world of difference when it comes to sound quality and volume but instead I just let him borrow my headphone amplifier.

His mind was blown.

While I don’t make a habit of schlepping full sized headphones with me on my morning commutes I will on occasion drag them along to provide the appropriate soundtrack to my day. I will, of course also drag along a portable amp.

You can listen to my full review of FiiO’s Mont Blanc E12 portable headphone amplifier (pictured above) on this week’s episode of the podcast but in short, it is sleek, black and powerful enough to drive a pair of 300 Ohm set of cans.

I compared them to Fiio’s own inexpensive discontinued E5 amp and the Total Bithead headphone amp and DAC from Headroom, sadly, also discontinued.

I was happy to learn that my cube mate ordered his own portable amp the very same day he test-drove mine. El Kaiser loves nothing more than helping someone get the most out of their gadgets.

Podcast

PTJ 90: Court Cases and Fiber Races

April 24, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

El Kaiser has a new toy and he can’t wait to tell you all about it. This week he reviews the Mont Blanc E12 portable headphone amplifier from FiiO. Let’s face it, ebooks are here to stay. J.D. fills us in on how to make margin notes and highlight our favorite passages on all the popular digital book readers.

In the news the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo; Lytro unveils a new camera; Rumors circulate that an Amazon smartphone will sport a radical new UI; Comcast reports its subscriber numbers are up; AT&T wants to beat Google in the Fiber Race; the AOL mail site is hacked; and Apple announces it plans to power all of its stores, data centers and offices with renewable energy sources.

Episode Links

PTJ 90 News: Now With More Fiber

April 24, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

The Supreme Court heard the legal arguments in American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo this week, a case that pits traditional over-the-air broadcast television companies against the feisty TV-streaming start-up with the wee antenna farms. Legal eagles and advocacy groups are watching closely and everyone awaits the Court’s decision, which is expected by June.

Creative types have some new outlets for expression. Serious photographers are buzzing about the new camera from Lytro and the Blurb service has made it easier for photographers and other visual artists to sell their works directly on Amazon.

And on the subject of Amazon, Bloomberg News is reporting on a study that shows Amazon’s sales numbers are down in states that collect online sales tax. (About 20 states currently tax Amazon purchases.) Perhaps the company can make up the loss in spectacular smartphone sales. The Boy Genius Report site has more details on what it claims to be Amazon’s upcoming handset, including tilting gestures for control and navigation. (Could the smartphone UI paradigm be tilting — or maybe even shifting — as well?)

Even before its planned merger with Time Warner Cable, Comcast continues to get larger. The company reported that its subscriber numbers were up for the second straight quarter, adding 24,000 new customers.

Comcast’s increasing size is what is driving monopoly fears in some people about the Time Warner Cable acquisition, and Netflix is one of the more recent companies to come out and voice its opposition to the pending deal. In a letter to its shareholders this week, Netflix said that with the decline of DSL in the broadband space, a combined Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have more than 60 percent of the broadband in US households. Comcast quickly put up a response to Netflix on its website, claiming that “Netflix’s opposition to our Time Warner Cable transaction is based on inaccurate claims and arguments.” (Also mentioned in that Netflix shareholder letter: prices for new subscribers are about to get higher. )

Google has been making noise about bringing superfast Internet fiber to 34 cities in nine major metropolitan areas, but now AT&T is jumping into the game and says it’s considering adding its own fast fiber to 100 cities in 21 major metro areas. Nothing has been built yet, but AT&T is at least talking about it.

Google has other things on its plate besides fast fiber. The company has combined SMS text and Hangout chats into the same conversation so everything’s all in the same place. That’s new with the Hangouts 2.1 app for Android. The Venturebeat site quotes sources at The Goog who say the company is looking into ways to make end-to-end encryption tools like PGP easier to use with Gmail so that users can keep their mail locked up against prying eyes from the government or otherwise.

If you abandoned an old AOL mail account for Gmail back in the day — or even if you still use AOL — you may see messages from your old address spewing spam across the Internet this week. The AOL Mail site was hacked over the weekend and spoofed accounts are sending phishing mail to addresses on AOL contacts lists. AOL has confirmed the hacking and said accounts had also been spoofed by spammers.

And finally, it was Earth Day this week, and Apple took the opportunity to announce that it has free recycling for all used Apple products and says it plans to power all of its stores, data centers and offices with renewable energy sources. The company’s redesigned Environmental Responsibility site has a video clip narrated by CEO Tim Cook that outlines Apple’s approach to green living. Critics of Apple’s approach point out that the company video neglects to mention that most of its products are built in China and that many Apple products are difficult to repair, especially for the do-it-yourself crowd who strives to keep old gear functioning and out of landfills. Hopefully, the Mighty Oak of Sustainability will one day grow out of Apple’s Acorn of 2014 Environmental Promises — or at least they’ll start designing gear with long-lasting batteries that are easy to replace and recycle.

Books, Episode Links

Book Marks

April 23, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Ebooks have grabbed quite a few eyeballs with their lower prices, wide selection and ability to be read on a tablet, reader or computer with a minimum of fuss. While ebooks do have their conveniences, some people are still pondering how to make margin notes or underline their favorite passages in the text, which can come in handy for study or book club reference. But scribbling digitally in your ebooks is rather easy on most of the major platforms.

Take the Amazon Kindle, for example. Whether you’re using a Kindle e-ink or Fire tablet, (or even the apps Amazon makes available to read Kindle books on Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone), you can annotate your ebooks. You typically just need to press and hold the word or passage until it highlights or you get an option to make a note within the text.

The notes and highlights you make in your Kindle books are also stored in your account on Amazon’s website — just log in to see them. If you choose, you can make your notes public so other Kindle users can see them on Amazon’s site. Although it can do so anonymously, Amazon’s site also keeps a public list of the most popular highlights from books, if you want to see what other people found noteworthy.

Barnes & Noble’s NOOK e-readers and apps have a similar tap-to-highlight passages and make notes. (You can share your favorite passages on social media if you want to brag on your literary taste.) Kobo, which has a line of e-readers and jumped into welcome users of Sony’s now-defunct Reader hardware also lets you mark up your ebooks.

Got Google Play books, say, on your Android phone or tablet? You can take notes and highlight text there, too. Apple’s iBooks app for its iOS devices and OS X Mavericks Macs adds colorful highlight colors and notes with a tap or click. On the book’s Contents page, you can see all your musings throughout the text listed all in once place for easy reference. Like the Kindle, your annotations sync up between all the iBooks devices you use.

While notes and highlighted passages in electronic books may lack the smudged immediacy or mental scorch-marks from the burst of late-night energy, they do have one major advantage — thanks to search and sync, they’re a lot easier to find within your books. And you also won’t wake up from a cram session with yellow Hi-Liter smeared all over your face.

Podcast

PTJ 89: Amazon Just Might Have Your Number

April 17, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

J.D. tells us how we can make a correction on a Google Map and Pedro hopes The Big Apple finally gets its recommended daily allowance of Google Fiber. In the news, Amazon is said to be working on its own line of smartphones; Facebook is ripping out the messaging functionality from its smartphone apps; Google purchases Titan Aerospace out from under Facebook; Samsung’s Galaxy S5 makes its official debut; Windows Phone 8.1 is getting raves; and a Linux distribution that leaves no trace on the host computer.

Episode Links

PTJ 89 News: Heads or Tails

April 17, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Merely having its own tablet and TV set-top box is clearly not enough to keep up with Google and Apple: Amazon is said to be working on its own line of smartphones now as well. According to the Boy Genius Report site and a few other sources, the flagship Amazon touchscreen phone will run a modified version of Android and sport a glasses-free 3D interface that can quickly whisk you to Amazon’s various online store departments. (And of course, the Web, where you can check out the True Detective/Family Circus mashup, Time is a Flat Circus.)

So much for the all-in-one approach: Facebook is ripping out the messaging functionality from its smartphone apps and forcing users who want to exchange messages within the service to download its separate Messenger app. Facebook claims the division of services makes messaging better and faster, but privacy advocates suggest a visit into the app’s settings to turn off location stamps and other potential annoyances like those Chat Head things.

Has there been a bit of upstreaming with the drones? According to The Wall Street Journal, Google has now slipped in and purchased Titan Aerospace, the drone maker of Facebook was flirting with earlier this year. However, The Social Network is paying $20 million for Ascenta, a company based in the United Kingdom that also makes unmanned solar-powered vehicles.

In mobile news, Samsung’s Galaxy S5 smartphone went on sale last week and seems to have sold a few units, even though Samsung has not released official sales figures yet. T-Mobile continues to stomp the data-plan paradigm and says it’s going to stop charging penalty fees for customers who go over their monthly limits. The company’s CEO also threw down the virtual gauntlet with an online petition and challenged its national-carrier rivals AT&T, Sprint and Verizon to lay off the overcharges as well.

Windows Phone 8.1 is getting some good reviews, including one from the Ars Technica site that calls it “a magnificent smartphone platform.” The new mobile OS can apparently accept passes designed for Apple’s Passbook app and the new Cortana assistant got special raves.

The Netflix company blog reports that Comcast customers here in the States are seeing streaming speeds up to 65 percent faster here in March than in January. (Guess that special deal paid off.)

Hopefully, everyone has their servers patched and their passwords changed after the Heartbleed bug hit the headlines last week. The National Journal notes that while the bug was publicized on April 7^th, the Google engineer and the Finnish security team at Codenomicon actually uncovered the flaw earlier in March. Google fixed its own servers and told a few other companies about the gaping security hole, but didn’t tell the US government.

Last week’s revelation of the Heartbleed bug sent a lot of people scrambling to change their passwords and shore up security — and for good reason. A new report from the Pew Research Center says 18 percent of adults using the Internet now say they’ve had important personal information stolen and 21 percent say they’ve had an mail or account with a social networking site compromised. (Remember when an occasional AOL email spoofing used to be the worst thing that ever happened?)

Talk about facetime: The FBI plans to have its state-of-the-art face recognition database up and running by this summer with more than 52 million photos on file — including those of people who have never committed a crime and have no reason to be in a law-enforcement database. Through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation requested documents regarding the FBI’s biometric database, Next Generation Identification, and published its findings. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is also keeping tabs on the NGI.

And finally, if privacy and security are on your mind, check out Tails. It’s the operating system Edward Snowden used in his work with the NSA. The Tails system is a Linux distribution that can run on almost any computer from a USB stick, SD card or DVD, where it leaves no trace on the host computer. Tails can offer anonymity to its users —unless of course, there’s a camera and face-recognition software nearby.

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint, Episode Links

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: Maps and Legends

April 16, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Even though it sometimes feels like they feel like it’s been around since the Web was invented, the Google Maps service has been available to the public for less than a decade. The Web version of Google Maps went live in 2005 and within months, had incorporated now-familiar features like satellite imagery and directions. The standalone Google Earth program, with its inventive use of satellite photos and 3D navigation, also arrived that year. (2005 was a very good year, indeed.)

The mobile version Google Maps app got a huge new user base in 2007 when the iPhone arrived to kick off the smartphone races. Google has been a dominant force in the world of online maps long before Apple’s ill-fated adventures in digital cartography showed the superiority of the Google Maps app.

Google itself diligently updates the material with its Street View cars, fresh satellite images, and other enhancements and it recently revamped Maps Web site. But one of the reasons Google Maps may seem so thorough is that the company allows users to help update the content and even make corrections to maps that are out of date — or just plan wrong. If you know an area of town and see a mistake on a Google Map, there’s a Report a Problem link right there on the page so you can let somebody at Google Maps HQ know.

But Google Maps invites much more participation than just corrections. With the free Google Map Maker tool, you, local citizen, can add places to a Google map, edit a place that’s already there, and add buildings, roads, hiking trails, bike lanes or other points of interest to a map. You can also review edits and additions made to maps by other Google users. When you go to the Google Map Maker site, you can get basic step-by-step instructions for editing maps and there’s a Getting Started Guide for the Map Maker Interface online. There’s also a Google Map Maker Help Center, MapUp meet-ups and an official forum available.

A couple of caveats: not every country is mapped by Google and yes, your own edits are reviewed by experts and others before they officially become part of the map so you can not name your neighbor’s house Jackhole Estates or anything.

So if you’ve every been led astray by an outdated Google map (perhaps a closed road or a point of interest that’s since closed), here’s you’re chance. Jump in, correct the record and save the world — or at least that part of the world for people who are lost in it.

Podcast

PTJ 88: Laser Beams and TV Streams

April 10, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

Admit it, you aren’t prepared for the onslaught of “must see” television shows airing on Sunday nights this spring on U.S. networks. That under-powered cable company issued PVR just ain’t gonna cut it. Lucky for you J.D. has some strategies for dealing with your TV watching blues. In the news, the United States Navy announces its engineers are putting the finishing touches on a laser weapon prototype; the Supreme Court decides to skip a case against the National Security Agency over bulk phone metadata surveillance; up to two-thirds of websites relying on OpenSSL might be susceptible to a critical security flaw; Google’s Play store deals with another embarrassing mishap; Windows XP officially bites the dust; and Battlestar Galactica may get “reimagined” again, but this time on the big screen.

Episode Links

PTJ 88 News: Frick and Frak

April 10, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Just about a year ago here on Pop Tech Jam, we were chattering about the tests the United States Navy was doing with laser weapons and this week, the Navy has announced its engineers are putting the finishing touches on a laser weapon prototype that will be the first to be deployed to a ship. The device is said to be accurate and affordable. However you feel about modern combat, this seems to be a significant step into the future. Frickin’ lasers. On a warboat.

Back in the present, the United States Supreme Court has decided to skip a case against the National Security Agency over all that bulk phone metadata surveillance. The Court denied a petition by activist Larry Klayman. Ars Technica and other sites have noted that the court giving this one a miss means that Congress will attempt to tackle the future of the phone surveillance program. However, given the past few years of Congressional productivity (or lack thereof), one is not filled with a sense of great hope on this matter.

Over in the Department of More Things To Be Paranoid About, The New York Times has a story this week about how hackers can break into computers on corporate networks in ways most people have never imagined — including online menus from Chinese food restaurants. And if you think that’s gonna gives you heartburn, check out Heartbleed, a dangerous security flaw. GigaOM has an info-roundup on the topic here.

The Google Play app store has another embarrassing security incident to add to its list. An app called Virus Shield, which cost $4 and had a huge number of downloads, was discovered last week to be a complete scam. Seriously. It did absolutely nothing. The Android Police site even posted samples of the app’s code to show the thing was bogus. Google has since yanked the app from the store.

Microsoft’s official End of Support for Windows XP deadline was this past Tuesday. Obituaries for the 12-and-a-half year-old operating system could be found around the Web along with stories about the massive security sinkhole the outdated system poses as it continues to run unsupported on millions of machines around the world. If you (or someone you know) is still on XP for whatever reason, at least make sure the poor computer has an up-to-date antivirus and security program installed and do not use Internet Explorer on it.

Microsoft fancies itself a TV studio now, too, after seeing Netflix and Amazon jump in. Bloomberg News reports that the company’s new Xbox television studio is producing at least six new shows that are expected to arrive this summer.

Amazon went and released its Amazon Fire TV set-top box last week. The small $99 device connects to your HDTV and pretty much serves as a rabbit hole right to Amazon’s warren of wares. Digital music and Amazon Instant Video streams, are available, of course, as is content from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Pandora and a few other services. (It has been noted that the Amazon Fire TV box has about 180 apps and channels so far, while Roku’s set-top streamer currently brings about 1,200 to your TV screen.)

Games could also be on the menu for the next version of Apple TV. Adding more weight to the rumors: a public filing to the FCC from Comcast and Time Warner Cable mentions that Apple is developing a new type of set-top box.

Speaking of set-top boxes and services, remember Google TV? Yeah, not exactly a barnburner there, with the whole Web-on-your-TV thing, but The Verge site is reporting that Google is having another go soon with Android TV. Google isn’t talking, but remember, the annual I/O conference is and the end of June in San Francisco.

Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference is set for early June, also in San Francisco, but Microsoft already had its programmer’s pow-wow last week. The annual Build Conference wrapped up last Friday after a series of announcements from the company on Windows-related matters.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of Apple’s aforementioned WWDC event, the 9to5Mac site has put together a roundup of all the rumors and leaks it’s heard on OS X 10.10 and iOS 8. (Also down Apple Way, Adobe has released a mobile version of its Lightroom program for photographers on the go with their iPads.)

Perhaps taking a page from the Facebook, Twitter is overhauling the design of user profile pages in its Web site. A post on the Twitter company blog describes its sassy new look for spring.

And finally, the Hollywood trade publication Variety is reporting that Universal is gearing up for a movie version of Battlestar Galactica. No word on casting or timing, but the site hears that the film will be developed as “a complete reimagining of the story.”
“WHYYYYYY?” so say we all.

Now let us think of happier times:

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