Tag Archives: Twitter

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Episode 18 News: X Marks the Spot. Or Not.

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Another iPhone hitting stores isn’t big news, but an Apple FAIL does tend to generate some buzz. As many users complained, the new iOS 6 Maps app still seems to be a work in progress with entire towns and cities missing, duplicate islands, misplaced location pins, incorrect names and stores that have long been out of business.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak even commented on the situation at an Apple event in Australia. If you’re an Apple Maps user and find a mistake, you can report the problem to Apple in hopes of getting it corrected. And/Or you can post a funny picture to the Amazing iOS6 Maps Tumblr. While Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Apple would have to approve a new standalone Google Maps app in the App Store, the company is said to be working on it. While the iOS Maps app may take a few months to arrive, Google did find some time in its schedule to update its own Google Play Books app for Android this week.

Samsung continues to pester Apple with TV and print ads touting its Galaxy S3 smartphone over the iPhone 5, but according the The Next Web, a security researcher has found a bug in certain Android smartphones. If exploited, the flaw may allow an attacker to perform a factory reset on vulnerable devices, just by embedding a link on a website or sending a text message. A video shows a phone running the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android displaying the flaw. (Malware has also popped up in Twitter direct messages, so be on guard from friends who send a link about you being in a Facebook video.)

And speaking of The Social Network, Facebook is working with the data-mining firm Datalogix in the hopes of showing to marketers that consumers who see ads on the social network actually buy the products advertised. Facebook users are automatically included in these Datalogix advertising studies, and cannot directly opt out through their Facebook settings. Instead, they must go to the Datalogix privacy page and opt out there. And in other Facebook Paranoia news, reports from France earlier this week claim the site is posting private messages from 2009 and earlier on users’ public timelines; Facebook denies these claims. (Still if Facebook annoys you and Google+ doesn’t thrill you, hey, there’s always Myspace —which is getting ready to bust out a redesign.)

Also hoping for a comeback: Research in Motion. The BlackBerry 10 system is going into another beta. BB10’s new features include the ability to have separate personal and work profiles—with the ability to run apps from both simultaneously while keeping the data from each profile separate.

Barnes & Noble isn’t letting Amazon and Apple have all the Big Tablet Fun, and introduced its own new Nook HD tablets this week, along with a streaming video service. Like video, videogames may be bypassing the console streaming directly to your television sometime in the near future, too.

And finally, the Orlando Sentinel is reporting that NASA officials would like to construct a “gateway spacecraft” that would hover in orbit on the far side of the moon. The project is still a long way off from becoming a reality, but when it does, Google will probably map it first — and more accurately.

Podcast

Episode 17: Faster Than Light, Baby!

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The Fall TV season is here and J.D. helps us use our mobile devices to look for what to watch plus Pedro has a new Tech Term. In the news, a new security vulnerability affects almost all IE browsers; blinged out cameras; the world’s most powerful camera; and warp drives may make the leap from science-fiction to science-fact.

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Episode 10 News: Summer Games

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The 2012 Olympics are underway in London and although social media and streaming apps are bigger than they’ve ever been during the Games, not everything is going swimmingly. The US television network NBC has been getting some criticism as viewers complained about the Opening Ceremony commentary and for editing out a sensitive section of the show that dealt with terrorism

The tweetstorm also raged against Twitter when company suspended the account of journalist Guy Adams after he posted an NBC exec’s corporate e-mail address as part of a rant about the TV coverage. (The Adams account was soon reinstated, but the whole episode should have won Twitter a gold medal in the Synchronized Kneejerk event. But at least the company has apologized.)

Facebook, another pillar of online activity, has its own issue this week with allegations of click-fraud. Limited Run, a small startup company, said it could not verify 80 percent of the clicks on its advertisements and wonders “Who let the bots out?” Limited Run (which has deleted its Facebook page) was also involved in another spat with Facebook over changing the name of its company page. Facebook has said it’s looking into these matters.

Hulu Plus has landed on the Apple TV, but what the tech blogs are more concerned with is that Apple may be making new product announcements on September 12. While we wait to find out, we can always try out Google’s revamp of video chat for Gmail.

Not everyone is down with Valve Software’s efforts to bring Steam games to the Linux paltform. Richard Stallman, the founder of The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, has some concerns. Whatever your feelings on the matter, we hear Left 4 Dead 2 (4 Linux) is coming along nicely. Also on a gaming note, Ubisoft has patched a major security vulnerability in its Uplay browser plug-in. Players, please update your software.

We’re into August (and our 10th episode!) and there’s still time to enjoy the idle pleasures of just parking it for summer with visits to state parks, car trips to National Parks and all-day passes to theme parks. Just wait until they fix the Superman Ultimate Flight roller coaster at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in California before you hop aboard, okay?

If you’re like The Kaiser, though, you may be spending your lazy days of summer upgrading your computers. (Ubuntu Linux frequently releases updates and that little company in Cupertino just popped out a new cat called OS X 10.8, you know.) As he reports this week, make sure your Mac has the hardware chops to wrestle the Cougar and prepare it properly before you jump into the App Store and slap down an electronic Jackson. The loss of the RSS Feeds feature in Safari and Mail is a bummer, but as with most things, there’s a hack to recover your lost Mail feeds for use elsewhere and a handful of other options for RSS fans who might be a tad peeved about the situation. Now that the brave and fearless early adopters have taken the Mountain Lion plunge, it won’t be long for the rest of us to catch up. Probably best to get it done before September 12th, just in case there are new things to occupy one’s attention.