Tag Archives: FaceTime

PTJ 299: Tumblin’ Down

January 31, 2019 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

The winter temperatures in the American Midwest may have plummeted, but in the technology world, it’s Apple and Facebook bouncing off the floor — and into each other over user privacy. El Kaiser and J.D. chew through the events of the past week, and also pause to ponder another question: How many streaming services can one actually have until it feels like paying the same old big bucks for a cable subscription? Click up Episode 299 to hear it all!

Links to News Stories Discussed on This Week’s Show

Apple Bug Lets IPhone Users Listen in on Others Via FaceTime (Bloomberg)
Apple Was Slow to Act on FaceTime Bug That Allows Spying on iPhones (The New York Times)
Attorney General James and Governor Cuomo Announce Investigation Into Apple FaceTime Privacy Breach (New York State Attorney General’s Office)
Apple Music takes flight on American Airlines (Apple)
New iPhone, iPad in 2019 and 2020: What to Expect from Apple (Bloomberg)
Apple bans Facebook’s Research app that paid users for data (TechCrunch)
Apple is punishing Facebook big-time for breaking its rules (Recode)
Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps (The Verge)
Google will stop peddling a data collector through Apple’s back door (TechCrunch)
Maybe Only Tim Cook Can Fix Facebook’s Privacy Problem (The New York Times)
Facebook Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Results (Facebook)
Does Facebook Really Know How Many Fake Accounts It Has? (The New York Times)
What you need to know about the sunset of consumer Google+ on April 2 (Google Cloud Blog)
IBM Research Releases ‘Diversity in Faces’ Dataset to Advance Study of Fairness in Facial Recognition Systems (IBM Blog Research)
MIT robot combines vision and touch to learn the game of Jenga (MIT News)

Swimming in Streams

How Long Do We Have Until We Reach Peak Streaming Service? (Gizmodo)
Expect peak streaming to further fragment the industry (The Business Journals)
Guide to Streaming Video Services (Consumer Reports)
Best Streaming Video Services 2019 (Tom’s Guide)
The Complete List of Streaming Services – 100+ Services (Flixed)

Episode Links

PTJ 191 News: Advancing Torpor

May 19, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Even more characters on Twitter — and we’re not even talking about the trolls! Bloomberg is reporting that the bird-themed microblogging service will soon stop counting the characters used by web links and photos in that 140-character limit.

Microsoft has big plans this summer for its Windows 10 Anniversary Upgrade, like more ads for promoted apps on your Start Menu. And as CNet and others have reported, Microsoft has gotten aggressive with the pop-up notifications now. Windows 7 and 8.1 users who have no plans to upgrade should pay careful attention to what those little nag-ass boxes are saying.

WhatsApp is moving into video-calling, according to those who have seen a recent beta version of the app for Android. At last, another video calling option to compete with FaceTime, Skype, Google Chat and the other apps out there.

Amazon, the über-mega-everything store already sells thousands of name-brand items, but The Wall Street Journal is talking to sources within the company who claim that Amazon plans to introduce its own house-label products like diapers and beverages.

AT&T, on the heels of its corporate hookup last year with DirecTV, announced this week that it had acquired Quickplay Media. Not to be confused with Apple’s QuickTime multimedia software or Quick Draw McGraw, the equine sheriff of the animated Old West, QuickPlay Media is a video-streaming platform for the “TV Everywhere” initiative and other over-the-top applications.

Adobe churned out yet more patches for its Flash Player multimedia software last week, but it seems Google has had about enough of the security-addled software. Developers for the company recently laid out plans to disable Flash by default and move to HTML 5 for multimedia playback. When the move happens by the end of the year, embedded Flash files in websites viewed in the Chrome browser won’t run or acknowledge the plug-in; Flash will hang around on some sites like YouTube until the end of 2017.

The Google I/O developer conference kicks off this week in Mountain View, California. Here’s the keynote speech. Google also put out a new app called Spaces this week for “small-scale” sharing.

Have you checked out the YouTube app’s Google Cardboard mode? As of this week, it’s now available on the iOS app as it catches up to the Android version. The mode converts any YouTube video into a Cardboard-worthy VR experience. (Disney is also after virtual reality fans with its new Disney Movies VR app out on Steam.)

Apple has finally updated its iTunes program for the desktop with an attempt to make navigation for the cluttered app more streamlined and sensible. Apple also pushed out other updates this week, including those for OS X, iOS, watch OS and tvOS for the fourth-generation Apple TV. (Speaking of the Apple TV, BitTorrent has just launched its own Live app there.) Be careful, though: According to screams from around the Twitterverse, however, the iOS update, version 9.3.2, has bricked more than one iPad Pro tablet. The OS X update 10.11.5 for El Capitan is seen primarily as a security fix.

Doom 2016 has come blasting out into stores. One reviewer over at PC World said the new modernized version of the classic first-person shooter succeeds because it knows it’s a big dumb bang-bang game.

Current C, a mobile-payments competitor to Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and similar services, has, shall we say, “suspended its campaign” and laid off about 30 staff members. Current C, which was hacked before it ever got out of the gate, is largely considered to be stranded on the Island of Abandoned Software Projects.

The SoundHound mobile app just got an update that adds a virtual assistant. To use it, just start out saying OK, Hound, and then you can ask it to do things like play music from certain streaming services, add songs to playlists, play YouTube music videos.

For consumers of more genteel entertainment, The Daily Telegraph over in London reports that the BBC and ITV television networks plan to launch a British competitor to Netflix. The working title, of course, is Britflix. Perhaps it will show Downton Abbey.

And finally, NASA has provided funding eight projects that are based on advanced technology, but could help kick the agency’s space exploration efforts into high gear. The development grants were part of Phase II NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, also known as NIAC. Among this year’s projects: “Advancing Torpor Inducing Transfer Habitats for Human Stasis to Mars,” which would put human passengers in a hibernation-like state for long trips to other planets and “Further Development of Aperture: A Precise Extremely Large Reflective Telescope Using Re-configurable Elements,” for a new type of space telescope that would use a membrane-like primary mirror that could be corrected after deployment. Congratulations to all the grant winners! Thanks for making the future!

Episode Links

Android 6.0 vs. iOS 9

September 2, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

So what’s the difference between Android and iOS anymore? While the two systems used to be more divergent, but the feature gap is closing fast, especially with this fall’s arrival of Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and iOS 9.

For example, both systems are upping the ante for their personal assistant software, trying to get ahead of Microsoft’s Cortana. As shown below, Google Now is getting tweaked, partly to provide more location-relevant suggestions and information and make it more helpful-but-creepy than ever. (“Hey what are you doing? Google Now is here for you, NOW!”) Apple’s faithful Siri assistant is getting some location-and contextual improvements to make her more useful as well. She’ll be able to remind you to do things in certain places, find photos from specific events and look up answers in more places online.

Google and Apple continue to “borrow” features from each other. Like iOS, Android Marshmallow will support a standard fingerprint ID — something Apple’s devices had for a few years in the form of Touch ID — but a feature that was a little more random across all the various Android handsets out there from different manufacturers. Of course, having a fingerprint scanner makes it easier for users to work mobile payment systems into their lives, and now Android Pay is here as the green-bot alternative to Apple Pay. Also like iOS, Android 6.0 will offer tighter control over app permissions.

Android Lollipop already has a Battery Saver mode, and Marshmallow is adding the Doze feature to slow down battery burn even more. Finally, iOS 9 is adding a low-power mode so iPhone users can more easily put the brakes on battery drain without having to go in and start turning off functions one by one to conserve juice.

Google Maps (also available as a third-party app on iOS) has long owned the mobile mapping space, but iOS 9 will try to gain some ground with the new version of Apple Maps (shown here) that comes with better mass-transit information. However, people who do not live in urban areas and do not need mass-transit schedules — or those who drive everywhere anyway — may not care so much.

The improved Notes app and the new News app give iOS 9 users some new software to explore. The new version of Android will offer USB-C support, the same all-in-one port Apple touted for its MacBook laptops earlier this year.

But it just may be iPad users may get the most out of iOS 9. For the larger devices. Apple is adding a better keyboard for the bigger screen, split-screen multitasking with apps (shown below) and a picture-in-picture window so you can FaceTime while also looking at apps. People rocking Android Marshmallow tablets can look forward to the multi-window mode and the spilt-keyboard function that’s been in iOS the past few versions.

With all this feature parity, it won’t be long at all until both systems feel almost the same. With that, it all comes down to the two other factors that drive our mobile choices: hardware and ecosystem, which means you just need to pick how many megapixels you want in your phone’s camera and where you want to download your missed episodes of Minority Report — in case, of course, you forgot to have Google Now or Siri remind you to watch in the first place.

Tech Term

Tech Term: Over-the-Top Applications

April 23, 2015 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been described as over-the-top. Yes, I’m bold and have been known to take things beyond reasonable limits but I am rarely excessive or outrageous. If you’ve ever met my family you’ll know that if anything I’m…um…under-the-bottom.

Ugh, that sounds so wrong. Let’s move on.

This week’s tech term is over-the-top application and Techopedia defines it as:

…any app or service that provides a product over the Internet and bypasses traditional distribution. Services that come over the top are most typically related to media and communication and are generally, if not always, lower in cost than the traditional method of delivery.

WhatsApp, Viber, FaceTime, and YouTube are all examples of OTT apps but two new TV related applications might push over-the-top usage further into the mainstream.

HBO Now allows you to stream content from the pay TV giant without needing a cable account, a requirement of the app’s sibling HBO Go.

Sling TV from satellite TV provider DISH bundles popular cable channels that viewers can watch on Internet Connected TVs, media streamers from Roku, Apple and others plus iOS and Android devices and your Mac or PC.

The release of these two apps plus OTT game changers Netflix and Hulu makes it very appealing for less tech savvy folk looking for a deal to cut the cable cord.

The number of OTT only households is expected to rise from 8 million to 14 million by 2020 but technical concerns over loading time, buffering and crashing could keep many from giving up their cable packages.

The plain truth is that Internet infrastructure here in the US is just not ready to handle millions more OTT and live-streamers without a major overhaul. Also cable companies will not go down without a fight. Net Neutrality regulation and security concerns could stifle the nascent over the top TV boom.

See, nothing outrageous or excessive. Nice and under-the-bottom, just the way I like it!

Listen to the latest episode of the podcast HERE.

Please consider following us on Twitter and Facebook.

The independent audio magazine devoted to mashing up pop culture, technology and more. J.D. Biersdorfer and Pedro Rafael Rosado are your hosts. It's an Internet Radio revolution!