Tag Archives: Satya Nadella

Podcast

PTJ 113: A Good Turn For Cybersecurity Awareness Month

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David Perry, threat strategist for F-Secure, joins J.D. and El Kaiser on the show this week and reminds us to remain steadfast and ever vigilant against the scourge of malware.

In the news, Apple rolls out new hardware; Google experiments with with video links for live medical chats; Symantec considers breaking up into two separate companies; Aereo keeps swinging away; Microsoft reports that more than a million people have registered for access to the Windows 10 Technical Preview; Samsung works on speeding up WiFi specs; and Mars gets set for a close encounter with a comet.

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PTJ 113 News: Close Encounters

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iBabyApple continues its fall rollout of hardware and software, and even smarthome devices designed to work with the iOS 8 HomeKit software in iOS 8 can be found in the Apple Store. Need a connected kitchen thermometer, baby monitor or weather station? How about digital door locks? They all await you. And the  Apple Pay service may launch this weekend — the MacRumors site posted an internal note from Walgreens telling stores to be ready to go live with Apple Pay on October 18th.

redcrossGoogle is  experimenting with video links for live medical chats with doctors over a video link. The feature is still in the experimental phase, but could wind up as one of the Google “Helpouts” video sessions that connect a user to experts or professionals for online help.

Symantec now says it’s breaking up into two separate companies, probably because everyone else is doing it. One of the new firms will keep concentrated on security and the other on information management.

Aereo — the feisty little company with the tiny antennas that got slapped down by the Surpeme Court last spring — has not given up the fight to remain in business and has sent a letter to the FCC saying it would be willing to accept new regulations like cable and satellite companies do. If that all goes through, it means Aereo will also have to start negotiating for retransmission fees with all the broadcasters that massively sued it in court the past few years.

Some people are interested in Windows OS X, er, Windows 10. A Microsoft blog reports that more than a million people have registered for the Windows Insider program that gives users access to the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

qikMicrosoft continues to tinker with the Skype voice and video-calling service. This week, the company announced the new Skype Qik mobile app for sending short video messages to friends. The Skype Qik app, available for Android, iOS and soon Microsoft’s own Windows Phone, is a little bit Vine and a little bit Snapchat. Perhaps Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella can use Skype Qik to send personal video apologies to the women who attended his appearance at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference last week, where he told the audience that women should trust karma if they don’t get the raise they want. As an F5 vortex of backlash ensued, Mr. Nadella quickly sent out a memo to Microsoft employees and the world saying “I got that question completely wrong.” No argument here.

Samsung announced that it’s working on its new 60 GHz Wi-Fi technology that allows for data speeds of up to 4.6 gigabits per second. All this is five times faster that the current possible speeds. The new Wi-Fi flavor is officially called 802.11ad and Samsung hopes to get it out there for consumers by next year.
Please hurry, Samsung!

tux_cloudsWe’ve heard all about the Google, Facebook and Amazon drones this year, and now the Linux Foundation is encouraging developers to check out the new Dronecode project that unites the existing PX4 open-source hardware and APM Autopilot projects. The Linux Foundation would like to remind us that drones can be used for good, too!

Dropbox posted a statement online this week saying that it wasn’t hacked and it was third-party services leaking user credentials. (So there.) The company also advises turning on two-step verification for your Dropbox account.

Snapsaved, one of those third-party services designed to save self-destructing Snapchat messages, got hacked and 500 megabytes of images that the original senders probably wanted to disappear forever are now free in the wild. Yeah, didn’t see that one coming.

nasamarsAnd finally, two little nuggets of Mars-related news. For one, technology developed to help the Mars Curiosity rover look for methane on Mars is being adapted by California’s Pacific Gas & Electric Company for a hand-held device that can locate gas leaks here on Earth for immediate repair. And second, comet watchers at NASA and other space agencies around the world will be tuning in on October 19th when Comet C/2013 A1 will fly within 87,000 miles of Mars. Now, 87,000 miles is practically spittin’ distance in space terms, and thanks to all the orbiters and rovers up there on the Red Planet, we ought to have a pretty good view of things. In fact, NASA already has an info page and its “Near Miss With Mars!” logo up and ready for your visit.

Podcast

PTJ 81: Facebook’s Paper Beats Scissors

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Facebook celebrates its 10th anniversary this week by allowing users to automagically create a short video highlight reel  of their time on the world’s most popular social network.  The decade old soc net also released a new iPhone-only mobile client dubbed Paper and J.D. gives us her review.  While he believes America is beautiful in any language, the Twitter backlash to Coca-Cola’s now famous multicultural Super Bowl advertisement has left El Kaiser less than thrilled.

In the news Microsoft finally picks a new CEO as Windows 8.1, Update 1 software leaks onto various file-sharing sites around the Internet; Google updates their Google Now service on mobile devices; Iridium introduces a WiFi hotspot that can get you on the Internet all over the world with a satellite connection; and Apple continues to note the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh computer with a celebratory movie shot by 15 camera crews using 100 iPhones.

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PTJ 81 News: Moves and Movie Memories

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New year, new job for Satya Nadella. Microsoft announced this week that he’ll be its new chief executive officer, only the third CEO in the company’s history. His official bio on the Microsoft site says his hobbies are cricket and poetry. Meanwhile, a version of the company’s Windows 8.1 Update 1 software has escaped into the wild and has made its way onto various file-sharing sites around the Internet.

Microsoft is among the tech companies releasing more information about US government requests for customer data. Google, along with Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn all released reports this week. While the reports are a bit vague and don’t do into details about how much of a customer’s data has been collected or what exactly was snagged, the disclosures come after the Obama administration relaxed regulations enough so the tech giants could give their users some idea of what was going on.

Google has been doing some updates of its own. If you’re using the Google Now service on a mobile device, as well as with the Chrome beta browser on your Mac, Windows or Chromebook system, you can see your notifications appear on the computer. An update to Google Maps for iOS now includes a new feature that tells you when there’s a faster route available when you’re cruising along in Navigation mode. Android users have had this perk for a month already. The Goog also released a new Google Cast software development kit for its Chromecast streaming media stick that lets developers beam and stream their apps to the big screen. (And John Nack, a longtime Adobe product manager, blogger and Photoshop evangelist has jumped ship after 13 years and is joining Google’s digital photography group.)

koreaIn the hardware headlines, Microsoft’s Kinect motion-controller is being used to monitor the DMZ, or demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. The controller works with special software to scan the area and identify anything that crosses into the DMZ. The program can tell the difference between animals and people and if a human is detected, an alert is sent to the nearest outpost. (Talk about an always-on system…)

For those who like to travel off the beaten path, Iridium says it’s not got a pocket-sized WiFi hotspot that can get you on the Internet all over the world with a satellite connection. The Iridium Go is due in the second quarter of this year, probably for less than $800 and will have its own Android and iOS apps. Expect raging speeds of about 20 kilobits per second and prepaid fees of about a buck a minute, but hey — you’re online in places you wouldn’t be otherwise. In other WiFi news, there’s a lawsuit brewing against Gogo, the in-flight Internet provider, brought on by people accuse the company of holding a monopoly over the sky-surfing business.

But wait, there’s more legal news! The Senate had some questions for Target CEO John Mulligan this week about that major data-security breach late last year that resulted in the theft of at least 40 million credit-card numbers. Several security experts were also on hand for the session. Mulligan also said this week that Target plans to overhaul its own credit-card system and move to the  smart chip-and-PIN system by early next year.

Democrats in the US Senate and House of Representatives introduced their own net neutrality bill early this week in hopes of reinstating the FCC’s recently struck-down Open Internet rules until the agency can come up with newer better regulations. The bill, H.R. 3982, is also known as The Open Internet Preservation Act of 2014.

And finally, Apple continues to note the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh computer with a celebratory movie shot by 15 camera crews using 100 iPhones. Want a more personalized cinematic experience? Facebook is ringing in its first decade by giving its users Look Back, a tool that creates a personalized greatest-hits video for each user from photos and other information from their timelines on the site. Here’s hoping you’ve aged better than the Macintosh 128K.