Iyaz Akhtar joins to chat about products at CES you CAN actually buy, the rise of messaging apps and Google buying Nest Labs.

MP3

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

MP4

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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 subreeddit

Show Notes

As I mentioned on the show today, next Thursday and Friday I’ll be shooting season 2 of Sword and Laser’s video show. So I need YOU to guest host.

Next Thursday and Friday will be special “News From You” shows. I’ll still pop in with a couple late-breaking headlines but I want to hear YOUR news reports. What’s the tech project you think isn’t getting
enough attention? What’s that point about wearables you think nobody else has mentioned? Let your voice be heard!

Here’s what you do
Record your bit as an audio file and email it to [email protected] and use the subject line NEWS FOR YOU or CALL (512) 593-2459 that’s (512) 59-DAILY. If we get it by 3 PM Eastern/11 AM Pacific Thursday morning, we’ll consider it for that day’s show. Same thing for Friday.

More show notes:

Google buys Nest for $3.2 billion: Always thought hip thermostat-maker Nest was Apple-like? Well think again. The Next Web reports Google just announced it has acquired Nest Labs for $3.2 billion. Nest will maintain a separate brand identity and Tony Fadell, who worked on the original iPod, will continue to lead the company.Fadell said Google will help Nest “change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone.” Google Ventures was an early investor in Nest.

Facebook purchases Branch:  According to CNET, Facebook has purchased Branch, a social topic discussion forum backed by Obvious Corp, the incubator owned by Twitter co-creators Evan Williams and Biz Stone. The news broke earliest on Jelly, the questions app launched by Biz Stone at CES. The Verge has sources that say Facebook paid around $15 million. Branch’s nine-person team will become Facebook Conversations, based in New York.

News From You:

Space X wins contract with Japanese satellite company: habichuelacondulce sent us a report from Bloomberg BusinessWeek that SpaceX has won a contract with Japan’s SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. to launch a telecommunications satellite in 2015. The satellite will replace an existing satellite, providing coverage to Asia, Russia, Oceania and the Pacific Islands.

Amazon most highly regarded brand in the US, according to YouGove Brand Index: spsheridan points us to a Business Insider story about the latest rankings from the YouGove Brand Index showing Amazon was the most highly regarded brand in the US last year, stealing the top spot from the Sandwhich-artists at Subway. Most tech companies took a dive not he chart after the Snwoden spying leaks implicated them. YouTube at 6 and Amazon’s Kindle at 10 were the only other tech brands int he top 10.

Virginia Court of Appeals orders Yelp to reveal names of negative reviewers:  WhoEver63 posted a BBC story about the Virginia Court of Appeals ordering Yelp to reveal the names of anonymous negative reviewers of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning. The judge said users have the right to express themselves anonymously, but added “If the reviewer was never a customer of the business, then the review is not an opinion; instead the review is based on a false statement.” The court believes Mr. Hadeed has provided sufficient reason to believe the reviewers were not customers. Yelp disagrees.

More links from the show: 

17 CES gadgets you can actually buy this year:

http://ces.cnet.com/2300-35294_1-10019396.html

Paris taxi drivers stage protest against Uber: 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/13/idUS327484426620140113

New Windows OS to ship April 2015:

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/threshold-be-called-windows-9-ship-april-2015

WordPress founder moves into CEO role at parent company Automattic: 

http://recode.net/2014/01/13/matt-mullenweg-shifts-into-ceo-role-at-automattic/

Flurry Analytics released datashowing overall app use grew 115% year over year in 2013:

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/103601/Mobile-Use-Grows-115-in-2013-Propelled-by-Messaging-Apps

Dropbox outage Friday night caused by buggy OS upgrade: 

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/dropbox-messed-up-os-upgrade-caused-two-days-of-downtime/

EA makes a version of Sim City playable offline: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25715010

Tom chats with Nicole Lee from Engadget about the Best of CES and the new Google + email ‘feature.’ Plus Len Peralta joins to draw the stories!

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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 subreeddit

Show Notes

As I mentioned on the show today, next Thursday and Friday I’ll be shooting season 2 of Sword and Laser’s video show. So I need YOU to guest host.

Next Thursday and Friday will be special “News From You” shows. I’ll still pop in with a couple late-breaking headlines but I want to hear YOUR news reports. What’s the tech project you think isn’t getting
enough attention? What’s that point about wearables you think nobody else has mentioned? Let your voice be heard!

Here’s what you do
Record your bit as an audio file LESS THAN 30 SECONDS PEOPLE, and email it to [email protected] and use the subject line NEWS FOR YOU. If we get it by 3 PM Eastern/11 AM Pacific Thursday morning, we’ll consider it for that day’s show. Same thing for Friday.

More show notes:

Engadget awarded the Oculus Rift VR prototype ‘Crystal Cove’ the official Best of CES award: The new version of the Rift reduces latency to 30-40 milliseconds and according to reports, eliminates motion blur from the 1080p display. A ton of new sensors on the outside of the headset are tracked by an external camera which means the Rift can now track the position of your body as well as your head. Still no release dates but Oculus says they’re shooting for a ballpark retail price of around $300.

The US Supreme Court has granted writ of certiorari to the case ‘ABC, Inc., et. al v. Aereo Inc.’:  Recode reports that Justice Alito took no part in the consideration of the decision.  Aereo provides access to micro-antennae allowing subscribers to get over the air channels via the Internet. Broadcast networks believe this is an unauthorized rebroadcast. So far, Aereo has won the lower court decisions. The Supreme Court could weigh in on the matter as early as this summer.

Facebook has announced it will phase out its Sponsored Stories ad units as of April 9th,  according to The Verge.  Facebook had announced in June it would end Sponsored Stories but did not give a date. Sponsored stories let companies pay to promote your actions in your friends news feed. For instance if you checked into a coffee shop, the shop could pay to have your check-in show up as an advertisement. Facebook agreed to pay $20 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought against them because of Sponsored stories.

 

Myke Hurley from 5 by 5 joins us to review some of the cooler items from off the beaten path at CES.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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 subreeddit

Show Notes

As I mentioned on the show today, next Thursday and Friday I’ll be shooting season 2 of Sword and Laser’s video show. So I need YOU to guest host.

Next Thursday and Friday will be special “News From You” shows. I’ll still pop in with a couple late-breaking headlines but I want to hear YOUR news reports. What’s the tech project you think isn’t getting
enough attention? What’s that point about wearables you think nobody else has mentioned? Let your voice be heard!

Here’s what you do
Record your bit as an audio file LESS THAN 30 SECONDS PEOPLE, and email it to [email protected] and use the subject line NEWS FOR YOU. If we get it by 3 PM Eastern/11 AM Pacific Thursday morning, we’ll consider it for that day’s show. Same thing for Friday.

More Notes

Samsung to announce the Samsung Galaxy S5: Bloomberg reports Samsung’s executive vice president of mobile, Lee Young Hee said the company will announce the Samsung Galaxy in March or April along with the successor to the Galaxy Gear which will have more advanced functions and an improved design. Lee also said the company is investigating iris recognition for the phone and will announce at least one more wearable device this year. Samsung registered a design for eyewear in October.

Gmail to allow users to send messages to Google+ users: The Next Web reports that Google will allow Gmail users to send messages to Google + users, without knowing the email address. The email address behind the G+ account will only become visible to someone who has received a message from that account. Also only one message can be sent to G+ name until that person responds. So if you don’t reply, they won’t know your email, and they won’t be able to email you again. If a sender is in your circle, their message will show up in the primary tab on Gmail, while other messages will go to the Social tab. You can override all this by changing a setting in Gmail to limit who can send you messages to your circles or nobody at all. The feature will roll out to all users over the next couple days.

FCC chairman weights in on AT&T’s sponsored data plan: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is not shy about commenting on AT&T’s sponsored data plan. Yesterday at CES, The Verge reports Wheeler said “Be sure, that if it interferes with the operation of the internet; that if it develops into an anticompetitive practice; that if it does have some kind of preferential treatment given somewhere, then that is cause for us to intervene.” And GigaOm reports that in a speech at the Computer History Museum in San Jose, today, Wheeler said “It is not the sort of thing that should be prohibited out of hand. But, again, history instructs us that not all new proposals have been benign.“

News From You:

More security experts pull out of RSA conference:  habichuelacondulce submitted a story from Information Week reporting the number of security experts pulling out of the RSA conference in protest of their dealing with the NSA has risen to nine. AS we mentioned before Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure was the first to pull out but now Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist and senior policy analyst for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project; Google senior staff software engineer Adam Langley; attorney Marcia Hofman; and Taia Global CEO Jeffrey Carr. are among the people who will not attend their presentations or skip the conference altogether. RSA has said it did not use an algorithm now known to be weaker because of the NSA, but it has not denied receiving a $10 million payment.

Infected Yahoo ads in Europe part of a Bitcoin mining scheme:  webitube pointed out a TechDirt article explaining that the malware that recently infected Yahoo ads in Europe was Bitcoin mining software. The idea would be to use infected computers to mine for bit coins and credit any coins minted to the malware authors. This would have the negative effect of running infected computers constantly and running up infected users’s electric bills.

More links from the show: 

Snapchat is sorry:

http://gigaom.com/2014/01/09/snapchat-says-sorry-for-getting-hacked-updates-app-with-phone-number-opt-out/

Apple and Samsung want to work it out via mediation:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/us-apple-samsung-idUSBREA0802P20140109?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

WWE launches its own network: The online network will be available on computers, iOS and Android devices as well as the Kindle Fire, Xbox 360, PS3 and 4 and Roku but only in the US.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/8/5289714/wwe-launching-24-7-subscription-network-to-bring-wrestling-to-you

Makerbot announces the Replicator Mini:

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/6/5281882/makerbot-replicator-mini-announced-ces-2014

Pebble Steel actually steel:

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/126190-pebble-goes-premium-pebble-steel-available-from-29-jan-for-249

Tom reviews some more announcements from CES, especially Sony’s Internet TV service, with Justin Robert Young.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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!

Today’s album art courtesy Ryan Officer!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreeddit

Show Notes

Tom chats with Jon Brodkin from Ars Technica. They’ll talk a little about CES and a lot about whether AT&T’s new ‘subsidized data’ plans break net neutrality.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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 subreeddit

Show Notes

This is a reupload of Monday’s episode for some users of iTunes having problems with that ep. If you already have 2142 you can delete this. My apologies AGAIN for the inconvenience – Tom

Tom chats with Lamarr Wilson about what’s happening at CES 2014 in las vegas.

MP3