Tag Archives: Sling TV

PTJ 205 News: Grab and Go

September 14, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Well, it’s a week later and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 problem continues to grow. Two government agencies have now issued warnings about using the new device. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is urging all Galaxy Note 7 owners to stop using the phones and to power down and stop charging them. And the Federal Aviation Administration is strongly advising passengers not to charge, turn on or even pack any Galaxy Note 7 devices in checked baggage. Samsung, for its part, is stepping up efforts with a quick-fix Galaxy Note 7 over-the-air patch designed to stop charging batteries form overheating by limiting the maximum charge to 60 percent. (And a quick correction to last week’s, it’s not just 1 percent of phones affected by the recall, it’s all of them.)

Could Google be working on a new 7-inch Android tablet to replace the retired Nexus 7 line? Several tech blogs are reporting that’s the case. (“w00t!” say we all!)

Google has also been doing some software updates this week as well. The company updated the iOS version of its Google Photos app to include a feature that turns iPhone Live Photos taken on a 6s or later into animated GIFs that can be shared more widely. And there’s also a new iOS version of the Google Cardboard Camera app for taking 3D 360-degree virtual-reality photos that look cool in your Google Cardboard Viewer. Of course, an Android version of the app has been out for awhile now.

Facebook has also updated its Messenger platform to be much more an e-commerce engine. One of the company’s blogs has announced that the site was quote “starting to roll out ads in News Feed that drive people to chat with your bot on Messenger.” You have been warned, people.

Apple doesn’t seem to be sitting still while Facebook takes all the advertising dollars, though. The iMessage app in the iOS 10 software that arrived this week now has its own app store where users can purchase things like stickers and games.

Instagram announced this week that it was adding keyword moderation tool that allows users to block comments using specific words from appearing on posts. Twitter, are you paying attention?

But speaking of Twitter, The Verge and other blogs are reporting that the bird-themed microblogging service’s previously announced plan to stop counting links, polls and other media in the 140-character limit will go into effect on September 19^th.

In Windows 10 news, Sling TV has an official Windows 10 app available in Microsoft’s Windows Store. The app allows the streaming TV service to work with Windows 10 and the Cortana virtual assistant to organize one’s television watching on the PC.

Blue Origin, the space exploration company owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, showed off some new rocket designs to the public this week. The designs were very nice.

And finally, NASA is working on that problem that another asteroid may smash into the earth and wipe out more than dinosaurs this time around. We need more knowledge on the topic, so last week, the agency launched a robot explorer craft called Osiris-REX (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) toward the asteroid Bennu, where it will orbit for two years. Before they part ways, Osiris-Rex will use its robot arm to reach out and take a piece of the rock before it turns around and comes back to each with the sample in tow. Talk about your takeout…

Podcast

PTJ 205: Throwing Sevens

September 14, 2016 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

After a week to process the big iPhone 7 announcement last week, technologist Don Donofrio returns to the show to discuss the good, the bad and the stuff Apple skipped this time around. In the news segment, El Kaiser and J.D. bring updates on the increasingly combustible Samsung Galaxy Note 7 situation, rumors of Google doing another 7-inch tablet and plenty of other non-Apple news from the geekosphere. Let’s roll the dice!

Episode Links, Podcast

The Year in Geek: 2015 Edition

December 22, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

2015 has come and (almost) gone and it’s time for the media-mandated Look Back at the Year We Just Had. [Drumroll … rimshot … clown horn noise] Noted in no particular order, here’s our list of high points, low points and things that just stood out to us here at Pop Tech Jam HQ over the course of the earth’s latest loop around the sun:

• NASA: New Horizons and Beyond.— While it wasn’t quite the Apollo 11 mojo, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had a banner year with the New Horizons successful flyby of Pluto and data treasure trove that’s still trickling back from the other side of the solar system. The agency also grew lettuce, aged whiskey and ran many other experiments up at the International Space Station while its Dawn spacecraft took at look at the dwarf planet Ceres. And that Matt Damon movie was very good publicity.

• Windows 10. Microsoft released its successor to the much-reviled Windows 8 this summer. Despite some major bugs and user wariness, Win10 did see relatively fast adoption rates by 8Haters, people finally upgrading from XP and those who wanted to try out the new technology as soon as they could.

• Security! Security! Security! (or Lack Thereof…). It seemed like no corporate database was safe from intrusion this year. Plenty of major companies got breached, including Anthem health insurance, the CVS Photos site, interactive toymaker VTech, the federal Office of Personal Management, the Internal Revenue Service, the Ashley Madison site for love affairs, Slack and Experian’s T-Mobile servers. Just to name, you know, A FEW OF THEM.

• Underwhelming Apple. The Fruit-Themed Toymaker of Cupertino finally released a smartwatch and a giant iPad in 2015 — just like industry types have been speculating about for years. And not only was much of the public was pretty “meh” about it all, the stock was down as well, based on fear of what comes next with iPhone sales.

• Video Streaming Goes Big. The standalone HBO Now finally arrived for Game of Thrones fans and other cord-cutters, Sling TV further chopped the coax with an over-the-top package of channels, and new voice-controlled streaming boxes from Amazon, Google, Roku, Apple and others have stepped up the battle for the living room’s big screen.

• Ad Blockers. Apple’s iOS 9 was just the latest piece of software that allows its users to block other pieces of software, namely intrusive advertising that makes reading so aggravating on mobile devices and other digital platforms. Yes, blocking ads takes money out of the content-publisher’s pocket (and may make it hard for them to keep going). But publishers and advertisers, if you don’t want people to use ad blockers, make better ads.

• E-Book Reversal. E-book sales dipped, and print titles had a slight rebound. And although some think nothing will happen, authors and publishers asked the Department of Justice to look into Amazon’s influence in the industry.

• Google, Even More Helpful But Creepy — Machine-learned responses to emails, self-driving cars, Trip Bundles, parking markers, rerouted traffic navigation on the fly and the increasingly accurate predictive Google Now service that tries to guess what you want to see before you see it. Yes, the Big G had a very big year all up in your business. (But remember, you don’t have to use it.)

• Broadway Sings Social Media. Internet fan favorite and Sulu OG George Takei used Twitter and Facebook to help spread the word about this new musical Allegiance, the story of Japanese internment camps in the United States during World War II. Meanwhile, creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of the Broadway smash musical Hamilton were all over Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other social outlets, not only to promote the show, but to add new views — like the short YouTube movie a cast member made about opening night from the actors’ perspective. The cast album for the show was available to stream free on the NPR site during the week before it arrived as an official download, and the recording’s devotees soon revved up the enthusiastic #Hamiltunes hashtag to quote their favorite lyrics. Smartphone videos of the weekly rapfest Ham4Ham — where the show’s actors perform short bits for fans clustered outside the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Manhattan’s West 46th Street — also got online play. And let’s not overlook the mash-up memes like #Force4Ham, which combined themes from both Hamilton and Star Wars. Now, about the latter…

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Sixteen years after The Phantom Menace and the turgid prequels, director and nostalgia reboot specialist J.J. Abrams revived the franchise with a record-smashing, uplifting return to form that served as a bridge between the old world and the new one in that galaxy far, far away. The Force is strong in that one.

Happy 2016 from Pop Tech Jam!

Episode Links

PTJ 157 News: Come September

September 3, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Yes, the Big Apple Fall Media Event was confirmed for September 9^th, and we’re all expecting the fancy 4^th generation Apple TV, the iPhone 6s, iOS 9 — and who knows, maybe even the iPad Maxi. Hardware aside, Hollywood trade mag Variety is reporting this week that Apple is looking into doing its own original programming, just like Amazon and Netflix. Apple, of course, is Not Commenting. The company did comment on — and even put out a press release — about another meeting it had this week, this one with networking giant Cisco to optimize networks for iOS users.

If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone and are running Cydia, listen up: Researchers have discovered malware called KeyRaider that has snagged more 225,000 Apple ID user names and passwords. The malware is getting out there though a third-party repository.

And if you’re got an iPhone but want to skip the Apple Watch in favor of a Android Wear device, you can now pair an Android-powered smartwatch or fitness tracker with an iPhone 5 later, thanks to the Android Wear app for iOS that arrived this week. Also in the department of smartwatches, Samsung announced its latest models, the Gear G2 and the Gear G2 Classic, at a Berlin trade show this week.

Those with Amazon Fire Tablets HD and HDX can now stream video content from the Dish Network’s Sling TV service. A free trial period is available for new customers and Sling TV is already available on the Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Nexus Player set-top boxes, the Xbox One, IOS and Android tablets and computers running Windows and Mac OS X. Also in Amazon Land, Prime Instant Video users with Android and iOS devices can now download selected titles for offline viewing. Very handy for planes, trains and automobiles — or anyplace without Wi-Fi.

PayPal is making it easier for friends who lend and borrow money to get squared away. With its new PayPal.Me service, the peer-to-peer payments platform lets users set up their own personalized URL that can be shared with others to request money.

Nintendo also has new stuff on the way for gamers on the go. The company is releasing smaller version of the Nintendo 3DS handheld console for those with more petite paws to play with.

Google’s tussle with the European Union continues, and could expand now to a number of civil lawsuits over antitrust allegations. The E.U. has had an investigation into Google for the past four years, trying to discern if the company was favoring its own services in search results. If Google is found guilty there, the ruling can be used as evidence in civil cases from other companies. A Google lawyer
posted a statement online last week that argues against the European Commission’s Statement of Objections with the headline “Improving quality isn’t anti-competitive.” In other Google news, the company changed its logo this week.

Facebook, which probably already knows a lot about you anyway, is getting into the virtual personal assistant game. Last week, the company announced its new M software, which hopes to muscle into Cortana and Siri’s territory. Facebook’s Instagram also got an update this week to add threaded messages and the ability to send photos from your feed as a direct message.

Speaking of virtual personalities, the hacked and sacked Ashley Madison trysting website has been accused of creating fake female profiles and powering them by chatbots to up boost the impression than that the site had more female users than it actually did. According the Guardian of London, a former employee sued the site in 2013 saying in a complaint that the site had required the creation of so many fake profiles, she had sustained repetitive stress injuries. Spokespeople for Ashley Madison have said that despite the epic data security fail and public resignation of its CEO, “hundreds of thousands” of new users signed up for the site, including 87, 596 (allegedly real) women and everything.

And finally, up in space, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft isn’t basking around doing nothing after its slam-dunk flyby of Pluto in July. NASA scientists are directing the probe toward a 30-mile wide object in the Kuiper Belt called 2014 MU69. While NASA doesn’t quite have everything in place yet for this bonus trip, it does have to do a little prep work ahead of time. New Horizons needs to fire up its steering engines in October to get situated for the flyby, which would actually take place in January of 2019. Start planning your 2014 MU69 flyby parties now!

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!

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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!