J.D. on what to expect when you install the latest version of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distro and Pedro on the Academy Awards ceremony. In the news, rumors heat up about casting for the new Star Wars movies; ISPs are watch your P2P downloading habits; the world’s smallest wireless charger; Mozilla’s new Firefox OS is nigh; and Samsung unveils the Galaxy 8.0 “phablet”.
Tag Archives: microsoft
Episode 36: Talking Apps and Malware Traps
If you’re too busy to get news headlines, weather updates or the latest social media posts from your friends, not to worry! J.D. introduces to some apps that will read them all for you. Sony announced its long awaited PS4 gaming-console this week and one feature captures El Kaisers attention: Ultra HD support. Pedro fills us in on the new video format in his Tech Term of the Week. In the news, Nasa’s Mars Rover drills into Martian soil for the first time; meteors rain down on Russia; Ubuntu gets into the tablet and smartphone business; Facebook contemplates autoplay video ads; and Apple gets hit by a virus attack.
Episode 36 News: Space Rocks!
Interplanetary boulders and red-plant dust have been flying this month. The Mars Curiosity rover drilled into the target rock and collected its very first sample. SpaceRef.com has a detailed look at the drilling, the sample collection and what may come next. Last week also saw the fly-by asteroid that came very close to Earth and the meteor that did hit, breaking up and pelting Russia last Friday. Reports of that meteor were all over the Web shortly after it hit, thanks to YouTube, Twitter and the apparent Russian love of dashboard cameras. Local people in the area are now said to be selling pieces of the space rock on eBay.
The meteor new has generated new interest in space and material science in the news, and a blog over on the British news site, the Telegraph, has an interesting essay about how heavy metals like gold and platinum may have come from meteorites hitting the Earth. And don’t forget: NASA is also hosting a live Google+ hangout with the crew on the International Space Station on February 22.
In non-space news, Canonical has officially unveiled a version of its Ubuntu Linux system for tablets. A developer preview arrived this week and will run on the Nexus 7 and 10 tablets (at least). Along with tablets, Ubuntu has also getting into smartphones lately.
The rumors are growing louder that Facebook will start embedding autoplay advertisements in user newsfeeds this spring – possibly in April. Some news sources have pointed out that Facebook costs money to operate and most things as useful as it is charge users and advertising is the life-blood that keeps the consumer Internet free.
Facebook itself was the target of hackers recently and these same hackers also managed to infect the computers of some Apple employees. Security breaches were just busting out all over. Burger King’s Twitter feed was hacked this week and was posting such announcements like the sale of the chain to archrival McDonald’s. The Twitter feed for Jeep was also compromised this week.
The New York Times and other news organizations have stories about a new 60-page report on Chinese hackers by the computer security company Mandiant. The report traces more than a hundred attacks on government departments, companies and journalists to a building about 40 minutes outside downtown Shanghai. The building is reportedly the headquarters of People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398. The Times contacted officials at the Chinese embassy in Washington, who again insisted that their government does not engage in computer hacking.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 will get announced March 14, and Google’s alleged Nexus 5 smartphone may be launching this spring as well, if the rumors are true. Both the Galaxy S4 and the new Google phone are thought to have a 13-megapixel camera. (As for Google, some Web gossips are even postulating a Triple 5 theory.) And while Samsung and Google duke it out, Samsung continues its competition with Apple and may even be doing its own smartwatch. With news of Google possibly opening its own retail stores, can Samsung stores be that far behind? Also biting the Big G: Microsoft said its Outlook.com mail service has gained 60 million users in 6 months, some of them, Gmail users.
And finally, the theory has been around for a while, but according to research published by Hungarian physicist Albert-László Barabási in in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, no two Web pages are separated by more than 19 clicks. Estimates put the total number of Web pages out there at more than 14 billion. So according to the theory all of these pages, through some link, text, image or other element, is less than 19 clicks from every other Web page out there. We are the world, yo.
Episode 35 News: Who Watches the Watch Men?
Is Apple working on a wearable computer? The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and several blogs reported rumors this week that the company is developing a curved glass smart watch and possibly a smart TV. Skeptics, (including the former Fake Steve Jobs blogger, Dan Lyons) suggest the sudden flood of rumors might be an attempt to boost that sagging stock price. Will this latest round of smartwatch attempts (including the Pebble Kickstarter project) gain traction this time around?
Here in New York City this week, Inkling showed off its new Habitat software for making digital books, as well as a tool called the Inkling Content Delivery Platform for searching through books. Inkling’s new software and services makes e-book collaboration quick and relatively easy and could challenge Amazon and Apple in the e-textbook space.
Some children are quick studies as it is — a spokesman for the AVG antivirus company told the BBC that it’s found kids are writing their own malicious software to hack accounts on gaining sites and social networks to do things like steal virtual currency. But learning code and mastering technology is part of a well-rounded education these days and a study at the University of California-Irvine has shown that medical students in an innovative, iPad-based educational program scored an average of 23-percent higher on their national exams than students using traditional study materials.
On the mobile front, Apple released a new update designed to fix 3G issues and other problems on the iPhone 4S. Android 4.2.2. is also now available for phones and tablets that can run it. Google’s update fixes Bluetooth audio-streaming issues. The BlackBerry Z10 and new system software are getting good early buzz in Europe and Canada, but Home Depot has said that it’s dropping the platform.
Microsoft is keeping busy and is said to be working on interactive TV content for the Xbox Live platform. There also seems to be something of a demand for the new 128-gigabyte Microsoft Surface Pro, the thousand-dollar tablet that can actually run Windows programs. While Windows 8 has taken its knocks, primarily from non-touchscreen laptop users, the system still has one big fan — former chairman Bill Gates who called the system a “huge advance.” Gates made the remarks in an Ask Me Anything interview over on the Reddit site.
And finally, American Express is rolling out a new program that lets cardholders link up their plastic with their Twitter accounts and buy things with tweets. To use it, an American Express cardholder needs to register their cards to sync with their Twitter accounts on a page on the Amex Web site. A $25 Amex Gift Card can also be had for the low, low discount price of $15 by tweeting #BuyAmexGiftCard25 with a synced account. The deals and products for purchase-by-tweet are still limited, but as The Consumerist dubbed it, Twitter is turning Hashtags into Cashtags. This sort of thing could be a dangerous thing for impulse buyers who are constantly on Twitter, especially if the technology somehow finds its way into a wearable computer…like a smartwatch.
Episode 35: What Time is it in Cupertino?
In this Valentine’s Day edition of Pop Tech Jam Apple blows El Kaiser’s mind — but not in a good way — and if you enjoy reading books on a portable device J.D. helps you build a giant e-library. In the news, a new app that lets you publish your own e-books; grammar school hackers; and how tablet computers can enhance education.
Episode 34: Movie Talk with J.D. and El Kaiser
The Academy Awards ceremony is a few weeks away and if you haven’t watched all of the nominated films no need to fret because Pop Tech Jam has you covered! J.D. tells us where to catch the winners and losers…legally. In the news, this year’s Super Bowl is the most interactive in history; Twitter gets hacked; Facebook continues pushing the envelope; and Microsoft helps Dell go private.
Episode 32 News: Great Spexpectations
Are typed passwords passé? Google has some thoughts, and in a paper to be published later this month, suggests a number of ideas to bolster password security with hardware like a USB token that can be plugged into the computer, a ring that can authenticate the user’s identity or two-step verification with a smartphone linked to the account. Now, if only the biometric retina scanners and voiceprint identification software were ready for the home market. (Fingerprint readers for smartphones seem to be in the works, though.)
In the world of mobile devices, Research in Motion has changed the name of its online store from BlackBerry App World to BlackBerry World. The Microsoft Surface Windows 8 Pro tablet will go on sale February 9th in the US and Canada. Instagram recently piped up to says it still has 90 million active users, even after the fallout from its PR blunder late last year about how maybe it just might share its users’ photos with advertisers for money (a TOS item that has since been revised).
File-sharing, especially sharing of copyrighted content, is the bane of the entertainment industry, but Columbia University’s American Assembly research center has just done a public option poll that suggests that people using peer-to-peer sharing services buy 30 percent more music than those who do not use P2P sharing. Kim Dotcom, founder of the late Megaupload site that was a favorite of those sharing copyrighted content, is back with a new file-storing and sharing site. (Some have raised security concerns, however.)
Do you prefer to do your video-sharing by watching TV with the family? The research firm Frank N. Magid Associates thinks many people may be buying a new TV soon; bells and whistles like big flat screens and built-in Internet connectivity are seen as upgrade lures. And there will soon be more to watch on the stream aside. Fans of the Arrested Development TV show celebrated when Netflix decided to pick up the long-canceled show and produce new episodes that are due this May, and now Amazon may be getting into the content-production game as well. The online ultra-mega-uberstore is said to have snagged the Zombieland TV show that was under development for one of the major broadcast networks.
At least these services pretty much have the whole streaming thing down, compared to the National Hockey League, which had some trouble with its own live video app this past weekend and plenty of griping fans; the NHL did acknowledge there were issues that they were “working hard to fix.”
Meanwhile, out in space… NASA’s older Mars rover, Opportunity, is still hard at work after 10 years of leaving Earth for its own mission on the Red Planet. And Curiosity, the bigger, newer rover is expected to start drilling on that rock within the next couple of weeks in search of evidence that Mars once had flowing water.
And finally, it’s time for Rumor Roundup:
- Specifications expectations (spexpectations?) are high for the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Samsung is said to be holding a press event on March 22.
- The iPhone, which the analyst firm Kantar WorldPanel ComTech says grabbed 51 percent of US smartphone sales last quarter, is always the subject of rumors and one of the latest murmurs says Apple has a model with a 4.8-inch display in the works with the curious name of the “iPhone Math.” The name, the hardware, the phone itself are all unconfirmed, but the iPhone Math comes alongside whispers of a cheaper model and an iPhone 5S possibly this summer. Or maybe next year. (And maybe it’ll have something to make the stockholders happy again.)
- Sony’s PlayStation 4 could be getting a touchscreen controller instead of or in addition to the traditional dual-stick model. And it may have biometric feedback built in.
- Microsoft’s next Xbox looks to be a powerful presence in the living room, if the leaked specifications are anywhere in the ballpark. According to the site VG Leaks, the next Xbox may have 8 gigabytes of RAM, a Blu-ray player, USB 3.0, a hard drive and HDMI port and a built in Kinect motion controller.
One hopes the real new Xbox lives up to the rumored Xbox here. And hey, that kind of multipurpose entertainment console just might call for…a new TV!
Episode 32: Yeah, But is it Magically Delicious?
J.D. helps us with Windows 8 this week by digging up some keyboard tricks that makes using Microsoft’s newest OS a little easier. Pedro goes to the movies and doesn’t like what he sees. Oh yeah, he also debuts his first new Tech Term of 2013. In the news, Google turns its attention to online security; Amazon aims to produce video content; and RIM gears up for Blackberry 10.
Episode 31 News: “Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.”
Late last week, the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert about a flaw in Oracle’s Java software that could have potentially put 850 million computers at risk. Apple, Mozilla and other companies advised uninstalling or disabling Java until an update was available and Oracle put the pedal to the metal and rushed out a fix over the weekend. Security experts, however, were still dubious about patch, lingering security issues or even the need to still run Java in the first place.
Java security flaws are also suspected in a wave of cyber-espionage attacks on computer networks used by several international governmental, scientific and diplomatic agencies The attack campaign, dubbed “Red October” by security firm Kaspersky Labs, seems to have been active since 2007 and continues — albeit without the brawny Sean Connery-Alec Baldwin star power of the 1990 film that was made from the namesake 1984 Tom Clancy thriller, “The Hunt for Red October.” (The film version is available to stream on Netflix, and if you have a Nintentdo Wii, you can also watch it there since Amazon’s Instant Video service is now available on your game console.)
In case you have too many online friends and can’t keep track of their interests, Facebook just introduced a new feature this week called Graph Search. This future tool lets you match up people on your friends list with things you are looking for, like buddies with similar hobbies — as long as they’ve shared the info publicly. Graph Search is in the beta stage and may cut into LinkedIn’s territory more than Google’s as some have speculated. Also in the social-network news: MySpace made its redesigned site available to the public this week.
John Scully, a former Apple CEO, said the company needs to adapt to a changing world by overhauling its supply chain to meet demand for cheaper smartphones in emerging markets. Competition from Samsung, which has now sold more than 100 million Galaxy smartphones, is probably adding to Apple’s angina. (Some research has even shown that younger buyers consider Samsung’s phones way cooler compared to the iPhone, which may feel like the 1990’s in reverse for the longtime Applefolk.)
But while Samsung and Apple duke it out in the profitability-and-popularity contest, Microsoft is still trying to get developers to write apps for its Windows Phone handsets. Perhaps in a whiff of reality-show excitement, the company launched a contest this week called “Window Phone Next App Star” that invites developers to create and submit their apps for judging and rating by public voters. Research in Motion is also in app-gathering mode and just got 15,000 new apps for the BlackBerry in about 37 hours thanks to a couple of Portathon sessions that invited developers to port versions of their apps for other systems to the BlackBerry OS for fun and prizes.
Meanwhile, up on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity Rover is rocking out and may be doing some drilling up on Mars. Yay, science!
Finally, we here at Pop Tech Jam note the passing of Internet prodigy and programmer Aaron Swartz, who sadly committed suicide at the age of 26 last week. Swartz, who helped create RSS at the age of 14, worked on other Web applications and was an advocate for freedom of information and open access online, was facing a Federal trial this spring for downloading millions of scientific journals, scholarly research and other documents from MIT and the JSTOR archive. While MIT has launched an internal probe of the events leading up to Mr. Swartz’s death, activists like the Electronic Freedom Foundation have called for an overall in computer crime law. Requiescat in pace, Mr. Swartz, and thank you for making the Internet a better place.
Episode 31: Doing That Crazy Java Jive
This week J.D. has some app suggestions that will help you maintain your automobile and Pedro fills us in on his weekend tablet modding exploits. In the news, lost in last week’s CES maelstrom was the announcement of a potential Java exploit that could affect almost 1 billion computers worldwide; Facebook gets into the search business and industry experts have suggestions for Apple on how to reverse their stock price slide.