[Music] on Tech news today Snapchat gets hacked everybody’s previewing CES News and is Google Glass really doomed all that and more coming up netcast you love from people you trust this is Twi bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cash fly at CAC fly.com [Music] it’s Thursday January 2nd 2014 and this is Tech news today Tech news today is brought to you by nobody this week our ad sponsor shows start Monday so this week’s shows are 100% ad free welcome to the new tech news today I’m Mike ggen I’m sarahan I’m Jason hell Tech news today delivers the technology news in 30 minutes or less this show is our beta normally you practice these kinds of things when you do a relaunch and this is our practice so if you’re watching this you’re a beta tester please report any bugs and uh let us know what you like don’t like and we’re going to be evolving this over time over the month of January and throughout the year so uh stay with us and let’s go ahead and shall we do the top news let’s do it top news Snapchat got hacked on New Year’s Eve day and the names and phone numbers from up to 4.6 million user accounts were downloaded a newly created website called Snapchat db. info posted the data online but with the last two digits of user phone numbers censored little helpful not that helpful the post has been removed but a cached version still exists an Australian company called Gibson security posted a warning to Snapchat about the possibility of an attack in August followed by details on Christmas Day 2 Days Later Snapchat claimed in a blog post to have taken steps to make such a hack more difficult to do difficult maybe but apparently not difficult enough Ford Motors has announced a solar powerered car called the caac solar energy that’s with an eye concept it has a special roof that concentrates the sun’s energy to boost the effect of the solar panel it’s a gas electric hybrid based on a plug-in hybrid called the cmax energy hybrid the difference is you don’t need to plug the cmax solar energy concept into the power grid at all Ford is going to show the car off it’s CES next week a new TV remote from Samsung features a smartphone like user interfaces the smart control as it’s called accepts voice commands touchpad input and even an in theair gestures a built-in microphone lets you talk to your TV without actually having to compete against the TV uh and the sound coming blasting across your living room gesture input works like the original Wii remote you sort of wave the thing around and it registers the gestures the weirdest feature to me is a dedicated quote soccer mode unquote which is displayed on the remote with a little soccer ball soccer mode optimizes the screen for watching soccer Samsung plans to unveil the remote at CS next week along with a new line of TVs possibly also optimized for soccer Google wants to turn your conversations into comic strips at least that’s what a newly granted patent is suggesting the company’s idea is to automatically or manually capture a back and forth convers ation and then insert that dialogue into a comic STP that can be shared using social media or email or instant messaging not unlike the social app Bitstrips but Google’s patents would lay users extend editing permission so a social conversation could continue as an ever expanding comic Google is helping the world’s largest democracy get out the vote over the next few months leading up to the general election in India Google will help India’s wait for it 725 million potential voters including nearly 150 million firsttime voters look up their registration status and find out where their local polling stations are uh there are something like 800,000 stations in India so they’re going to use Google Maps to help people find the right station adding to the complexity India has about 1,300 political parties Google offers these kind of services uh free of charge and they do it in something like a 100 countries but the scale of India’s elections dwarfs all the others Tech chipster EV leaks tweeted this morning what he claims is a picture of LG’s upcoming webos powered Smart TV which is expected to be announced at CES next week the photo appears to reveal a new card-based user interface as well as support for YouTube Facebook Twitter and Skype apps LG bought web OS from HP in February with the intention of using it for TVs even though it was originally designed for phones and tablets you will recall that Palm launched webos in 2009 and HP acquired pal in 2010 if that picture is real I definitely want one that looked pretty pretty great the new site the information reports that Sony and ZTE this Chinese handset manufacturer May soon launch Windows Phone handsets the report is based on two Anonymous sources and says that if Microsoft is slashing prices to convince the Japanese and Chinese phone makers to jump on board while ZTE is not a well-known brand in the United States the company is planning to expand aggressively in key markets around the world including the United States they hope to become the number three three handset maker sometime in the next few years um today it’s pretty much Nokia’s game Nokia has about 90% market share for Windows phone devices according to a recent report from ad duplex Mark Zuckerberg was the most charitable American in 2013 that’s according to the chronicle of philanthropy well why the Facebook CEO and his wife Priscilla Chan gave almost $1 billion dollar worth of Facebook stock that’s about 18 million shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation last year that gift makes Zuckerberg the only American under the age of 30 to ever top the chronicle of philanthropy’s top givers list he’s 29 well that’s the top news and we are going to turn to the conversation so we’ve dragged Our Guest today Robert scoel the co-author of age of context mobile sensors data and the future of privacy uh scoel also blogs at scaler.com on Facebook and Google+ and he interviews startups on camera for the Rackspace sponsored site Building 43 Welcome Robert thank you thanks for having me on so everybody seems to be talking about your go+ post uh where you basically said that Google Glass is doomed why do you say Google Glass is doomed I thought you were the one of the biggest cheerleaders and advocates for Google Glass if you read the post I don’t say it’s doomed long term I I think this is a really important product but I think in 2014 I think the typ of it has gotten uh ahead of where the product is and I if if it gets into a pissing match between Google Glass and Apple iatch for instance which is how a lot of the press is starting to set it set up the storyline for this year then it is DED because it’s not going to sell as many as the Apple eyew watch uh out the gate and if that if that’s how the story of Google Glass is written then it’s doomed um I I hope that people take a longer uh point of view on this thing this is a a cooking product that a product that’s under development that is going to need a couple more years to really get to the place where I can recommend let’s say my wife wear one around MH and why do you think Google Glass makes people crazy you you mentioned a lot of a lot of the reactions that people have there’s also a disagreement about whether it’s socially acceptable socially acceptable people either love it or they hate it they’re afraid of it or they want one it was the most controversial product of my lifetime and I’m not too scared about that I you know every product has been controversial in fact I I just watched a a film on the early development of automobiles and people hated those too in fact there was a law in some places where a guy would have to walk in front of the early automobile with a red flag to warn everybody that one of these Contraptions is coming down the road sounds silly today because today we all depend on them but back then it was uh something scary and frightening and and different than your horse and buggy was um and I think that’s part of what’s going on here this is not a computer that you look at or touch it’s something on your face which makes it very very uh personal and very very uh um you know scary to some people plus it has uh a camera and with all the NSA stories it’s you know there’s lots of jokes oh there’s NSA recording me you know or watching me right now and it’s like no I if it had enough battery life to be transmitting to the NSA it could also be transmitting to YouTube which would be very cool and it doesn’t have that much battery life you know um which is some of the problems right they’re trying to shove a lot of compute power in 49 grams and the battery just isn’t isn’t there yet um we need we need a um a a breakthrough in Battery Technology to really make this wearable style of computer uh really really Ultra useful anyway that it is it’s it’s a a dystopian future that we’re heading toward and it’s uh scary to a lot of people um Robert you’re also wearing glasses on underneath your Google glasses glass and you know a lot of people myself included although I think you look lovely say Google Glass is just it’s too much of a fashion statement it’s it’s too much to ask of people even if they want to wear it and they like the technology inside it’s got to look better or at least have more variety because it is a bit of a fashion statement what do you think about that and for me that’ll improve dramatically in the in the next couple months when they bring out prescription lens versions and I’m already somebody already asked me for my uh prescription so they they are coming and and I expect the final product that actually ships to the public keep in mind this is still a prototype it’s still a a pre-release version I I have a feeling that it’s going to look different than this but even if it looks like this you know you can put stickers on it and have some fun with it and I I find most people are very very fascinated by it and very interested I I don’t have a lot of the negative reactions that you see online a lot of places which is very very interesting to me um and I think it’ll change you know I just was over at meta which is another wearable startup that’s building a wearable computer and they’re showing me the trend lines of sensors and of the parts and how how much smaller they’re getting literally month by month so if we take this out you know three or four years um I think it’ll be a quite different product than it is today you mentioned meow meta is probably at one extreme end of the Spectrum in terms of capability uh on the high end I think they’re they’re looking at a $3,000 device something like that well they have two 720p screens where this is only 620 by 340 something like that uh and and they have a a front-facing uh 3D sensor so you can do hand gestures with a new kind of user interface so that yeah meta is the one that’s really pushing hardest on the pleading Edge yeah uh where Google is this is really a notification system it just shows me like tweets and lightweight stuff and lets me take a picture and answer a phone call kind of thing you made a great Point uh in your post uh that the user interface which I’m a big fan of I think it’s a very simplified user interface and it seems great when there’s nothing really going on but once everybody starts pil in on with apps the interface really can’t handle it what do you think Google’s going to do about that I don’t know I you know and I I know that they’re working on a contextual operating system for a future version of this and I think that’s partly why they’re doing that so that they can pull apps up to your uh view uh based on what you’re doing so if you’re in a meeting pull up some productivity apps if you’re you know skiing on a ski slope pull up skiing apps you know or if you’re shopping pull up some shopping apps like a to-do list or a a coupon manager or something like that right um but we’re a we’re a couple years away from that so I I really don’t know what the final UI is going to look like and I I hope they have a decent answer because you know on our iPhones and Android phones if you have more than about 200 apps you’d start forgetting which apps you have and how to find them and you have to page through a lot of uh Pages you know to get to the to the apps and on Google Glass if you’re having a scroll like this for a minute to find some some app that’s just not going to work yeah so so uh it’d be great to have you on a year from now because right now the the the smart glass universe is all about Google Glass a year from now there are going to be a dozen or two dozen players are there any uh startups that you see that you think have a a real shot of giving Google a run for its money I not not the way Google has um shown this glass which is a lightweight notification system with a little bit of augmented reality uh a little bit of maps a little bit this is the first consumer electronics Gadget that knows where I’m aimed fulltime and where my eyes are looking and we haven’t yet seen any software that uses that but I well that’s not true I’ve seen for instance a kid built a game where aliens fly from the ceiling and you shoot them by looking at them uh to which shows what’s possible but right now there’s no app store uh had to hack the apis to build that game there’s not a SDK that really has a set of apis that lets you have full access to the sensors and we we have a lot of unanswered questions so I think in a year we’re gonna have a real good idea of what Google is doing and what the thirdparty Market’s going to do with this uh and then we’re going to figure out what this the competitors are going to do I I mean there’s a lot of competitors like Epiphany eyewear is just putting a camera inside a sunglass frame you know and maybe maybe if people just want a camera uh that’s small and on your face that might be usable you know that might go but I I don’t think so I I I want even more than Google Glass has so I’m looking at at tier systems or uh meta or uh uh Recon instruments which is making the um uh wearable computer inside the Oakley ski goggle I I think those are the more interesting uh competitors to the glass concept but we’re uh this is a really a market that I think is going to come around in two 2016 to 2020 so a lot of these early players are just trying to get to where uh the market will be then you know and uh I it’s not about today that’s that was sort of my sense of the story was you know if we make this all about 2014 it’s it’s doomed because it’s not it’s not going to be a mainstream product in 2014 how do we judge the success of this thing uh what what is a lot of users what is a good market share I mean it’s not going to be anywhere near smartphones I you know it really depends on where they set the price I I know the cost of goods is around $150 but then you have to go into a store and spend an hour getting it fitted first of all and then they need to train you a little bit on how to use the the O the operating system um if it so let’s say it’s $500 then you know a$ 100,000 sold would be a pretty good success if it’s higher than 5 $100 then it’s going to be far less you know I’d be surprised if they sold 25 30,000 of them okay which is just not not interesting numbers I mean I expect the Apple I watch if it’s $200 or $300 to sell in the tens of millions you know so uh that and that’s what they’re what they’re up against apple has a series of stores all set up ready to go to sell watch right um I Google doesn’t have that kind of distribution at retail level uh they’re they’re having to set up new retail distribution that’s why I all the way around I think this is a product that’s really going to take off you know two three five years maybe even longer from now you know remember we saw the Newton what in the late uh late 90s right and um it took uh another decade for the iPhone to come around right and really and really make the the thing work and I had a tablet PC that looked a lot like the iPad back in 2002 and I took another years for the iPad to come along and get you know where the price would drop and the battery life would turn from an hour to 10 hours and on and on um and and this is going to be the same thing here this is really the Apple two of a new age y okay well Robert thank you so much for joining us on short notice uh it was an awesome post and um and I appreciate you coming on we’ll have you we’ll have you back in one year and we can talk about the whole huge market and see how not a moment sooner yeah right thank you see you January 2nd 2015 thanks Robert hopefully I’m here okay so um Sarah the uh the uh the Snapchat Hack was this how horrible was this all right so we mentioned a little earlier in the show but some details of it is phone numbers and usernames of more than 4.6 million Snapchat users all in North America uh so that’s still a lot of people got leaked New Year’s Day Snapchat DB was a site that went up we don’t know if it’s an individual or a group of individuals uh that that ran it and allowed open access to two different files SQL dump and a CSV text it is now offline the hosting provider has probably gotten hammered and tired of dealing with it but while it was live as you mentioned the last two numbers were OB fiscated so it’s the sort of thing where if it’s most of my phone number and you don’t know the last two well you could guess for a while and you probably get there but you know it was it was designed to minimize spam and abuse that’s according to again whoever was behind the hack so those individuals told The Verge that their motivation behind the release was to raise public awareness around the issue put public pressure on Snapchat get the exploit fixed this is one of the things that often hackers will do they’ll say uh it’s it’s almost polite to talk to the company say there’s something going on here what are you going to do about it if the company doesn’t respond or uh fix the exploit in a manner that uh the the the hackers deem worthy they say well you know you asked for it and now the public should know that this isn’t actually a secure way to run a business Snapchat had alluded to a flaw it kind of downplay that was posted on Christmas Eve by Gibson security that claimed you can match phone numbers to usernames every few minutes if you’re sort of compiling a bunch of data Snapchat DB claims that that leak helped spread awareness that Snapchat simply isn’t secure and there’s a lot of criticism that um Snapchat didn’t take this seriously they basically responded in a blog post uh early on to to the Gibson security right uh post and said yeah it’s not that big of a deal we’ve taken some steps uh and in hindsight that looks very careless with user data on the other hand we’re just talking about phone numbers I think there addresses and people go on Snapchat so that they can be private with their communication and yep and it doesn’t look like any communication or photos or anything like that were leaked so it’s hard to G what how serious this is of a hack well and there’s there’s interesting conversation going on at least in my Social Circles this morning people saying how important is it really that your number isn’t known by people I mean I think phone numbers are often used as just a way to say are you who you say you are enter your phone number okay yeah you’re sarahan got it but I had a friend who I made sign up for Snapchat the other night because I thought that she would enjoy it and she says why they need my phone number and I said oh just you know it’s the way that Facebook wants your phone number if in case you get locked out of your account or something but but it’s it’s there’s it’s really sort of the phone number itself is deemphasized these days I think usernames are something that people are a little bit more scared about because it’s like if I’m sarahan rocks in IRC here at twit and I’m sarahan rocks on Snapchat well then people can kind of uh use my uh crumb Trail to find me in other places sure absolutely and I also wonder uh if these phone numbers are linked so that people can sort of do an NSA metadata sort of connection between people yeah be interesting to see how it uh how it shakes out well you know smartphones um have a a real habit of gobbling up other types of things cameras they’ve uh eaten up uh you know just about any sort of like you know even with apps you can do home uh things like levels and and lots of tools that used to Exist by themselves are now built into the phone uh the question is are smartphones in a position to take over car dashboard boards the sort of entertainment and navigation uh elements in an in an automobile um a really interesting report by uh the intellectual property research firm Envision IP added up all the patents owned by smartphone handset and platform makers and the numbers are pretty astonishing at least I was astonished they said Google owns 310 patents around the integration of smartphones and also car navigation and another 153 applied for this is Google we’re talking about now many of these patents are from Motorola uh and also from the self-driving car projects some of them are way out they’re not regular dashboard stuff there you know how to uh build a car that drives itself still that’s a lot of patents uh Samsung LG and Sony each have hundreds of patents apple and noia each have dozens and and patent Apple seems to be a little bit behind in the patent Arena but they are a little bit ahead with iOS and the car which is going to uh start showing up this year in lots and lots of models and uh one report said that they’re going to have uh roughly half the model half the market um so you know I guess the question is are people going to buy a car because it supports the iPhone are they going to demand that an Android uh supporting uh dashboard exist in their car I mean what do you think the the ability is for handset vendors to sort of take this over well I mean I think if you’re talking about the Android side I mean the Android experience is is widely different depending on what device you’re using how it’s skinned what the manufacturer is uh with the iPhone it’s a little different right now via Bluetooth my car and my iPhone actually work together very well but it’s not company based it’s whatever I happen to use and usually it’s uh something like Maps where I want a voice to tell me where I need to turn next and I don’t have to look at my phone and it comes through my car speakers and I’m very happy not all cars have that capability and my capability is limited uh for example Apple Maps very weirdly will not use Bluetooth to connect to my car speakers but Google Maps does very well so that’s the maps that I use when I want something that’s handfree handsfree I expect that to be integrated better in the future I know uh uh Mercedes I think announced that they were going to have tighter integration with their on their their onboard uh the visual aspects of of of what you can achieve in a smartphone but at this point I’m kind of like what I don’t want is to say I’m going to buy a new car sure but I can only use something that’s made by Google as as my dashboard I in fact I don’t I don’t even really know how much it makes sense to have things baked into the car when you can just make sure that the phone is connected and then you take it with you exactly still I think they’re going to they try to do that and I I’ve actually have a sneaking suspicion that eventually apple is going to want to make the part of the system that’s built into the dash and essentially have that be an Apple product sure um that would be good for Apple that would be good for people who are definitely going to have everybody in the family using iPhones or whatever in the car uh and I also think the the the hidden benefit that Apple could bring to the Auto industry is their expertise in kind of I guess you could call it creative manufacturing if you look at across the Apple products uh a lot of their patents a lot of their Ingenuity is in the realm of how do you make stuff how do you do it quickly they have good systems for making and Manufacturing things and working with designers in parallel so you can go to market very quickly the car industry is a nightmare uh compared to the handset industry in terms of how long it takes to go from a design to an automobile rolling off the factory floor it’s years and so that would drive these companies nuts so I I I I really um I agree with you it’s really got to be open and I think you know hopefully consumers will reward the open systems rather than ones that sort of lock out different handset makers it’ll be interesting to see much as a smartphone is now a an accessory and it’s supposed to look good and people go oo look at the new LG phone oh that looks really nice I don’t care what’s on the inside uh and I think as much as we all would like the insides of our vehicles to be as cool as possible to have something like apple branding or Motorola or something that is prominently displayed and looks a certain way regardless of who actually made the car is a really interesting concept yeah not necessarily a good one but it’s a selling point yeah and people already have brand loyalties so you know why not why not uh you know you know that some car companies at least are going to use that kind of uh sort of the warm and fuzzy halo effect from the from the Consumer Electronics world to sell uh cars it’s going to happen all right well AOL who uh was the former owner of both Winamp and shoutcast music announced that it planned to shutter both of those services but we heard before the Christmas break there was word of possible sale to Microsoft now it appears that both properties are being acquired by radionomy which I had not heard of but it’s an international aggregator of online radio stations it’s based in Belgium two Winamp Forum members noticed that win’s name servers had been transferred to radionomy so this is a little bit of a hey what’s going on here Tech crunch says they have a source that confirms both properties will be transferred by end of day tomorrow radionomy if you’re also not familiar has around 6,000 stations in its catalog it has a platform so anybody like you and me can use to create a channel not unlike I guess uh audio podcasts Shia cast has a 50,000 catalog of radio station so that will definitely help their total offerings and you figure win amp’s music player could be used to program and PlayStations one of radionomy investors is music mtic which develops audio and video experiences for stores and other venues you know wi amp for a long time to me was that was that was the way that I used to listen to my mp3s when you know in the Napster days that sort of thing and it’s it’s sort of funny that it’s come to a point where it’s beloved but it’s old yeah but it’s still beloved and AOL intended to shut it down and there was enough interest that yeah it appears it went to a good place yeah this reminds me of the old Yahoo where they were more famous for shutting things down than and and when you saw them shutting down uh you’re like wow that was a great product I didn’t know about that I would have loved to have used that and this is another case where people kind of it’s out of sight out of mind and when they shut it down then people sort of come out of the woodwork to to say that they love it it’s uh kind of an odd thing maybe maybe a hacker will come along and just post them all all this the whole music library somewhere and it’ll be all over but uh but yeah it’s it’s an interesting phenomenon and it happens uh in a lot of areas yeah I uh I I I look forward to radionomy uh if anybody uh if anybody out there actually has uh stations that whether they’re Tech or geek related or anything that the twit audience likes you should email us and let us know because I I uh I look forward to experiencing uh not just winm but but a variety of online music stations um and radio stations that have yet to be created well that’s the conversation uh now in other news uh Think Geek is now selling a previously announced Android gaming controller that’s small enough to live on your keychain it’s called the IM pulse and it costs $39.99 uh it has a little d-pad and uh and a few other standard buttons and uh I think this is pretty ridiculous if you think about it why well because it’s like you’re trying to you’re trying to get the sort of the Xbox console gaming thing down to a mobile device the whole point of of the of mobile gaming I think is that it’s just you whip out your phone you don’t have peripheral devices and all that kind of stuff you just but uh I think it’s it’s it’s kind of a funny thing this um this would have been a great stocking stuffer though for for a lot of I mean I have pretty small hands and this is they’re not that small nope no they’re not and I don’t know unless you’re in do that unless you’re a little baby who’s really good at gaming I’m not sure who this is for but I it’s one of those like hey look how small it is 40 bucks you put on your keychain yep all right uh after Google punished Rap Genius for inappropriate SEO usage which basically put its sight at the top of any result for pretty much any lyric of any rap song when searched is a great service but Google doesn’t really like it when you do things like that valeg notes that Rap Genius now has traffic that’s down to a level resembling traffic that it had around the summer of 2011 which was not good much much much lower than the upward trajectory that it had been enjoyed for all of 2013 if you bury Rap Genius results down to in some cases the seventh page in a search basically Google is killing the business model so usually Google search bands the Rap Genius is not the only uh company that’s been slapped on the wrist for this usually lasts around 30 to 60 days but when they come back if and when that happens company will need to rethink how it links to lyrics and I don’t know how familiar you are with Rap Genius Mike but I hang out a lot I love it I think it’s a wonderful service but what they do and it’s it’s genius actually is every line of a a you know you’ve got a song it’s not just a cut and paste onto a single web page with a Perma link every line is its own link because if I’m searching for a lyric and a song it then takes me to that highlighted text on the page so it’s a link within a link which works out very well and can be uh extremely convenient when you’re looking for something but Google says no no no no that’s not the way it works too many too many links you’re you’re you you can’t always be the first search result anytime anyone searches for a lyric to a song that’s right that’s right they’ll work it out and it’ll all it’ll all work out in the end um and uh you know I think it’ll be fine but yeah it’s a great service and I think this whole you know I think the the long-term effect is with all this press is that a lot more people know about Rap Genius than they used to so that’s that’s a that’s a pretty great thing for for them uh okay well um that’s pretty much our show CES is next week so fasten your seat belts uh it starts Tuesday January 7 uh and goes on to January 10th in Las Vegas we’re going to have uh you know uh some people there so it’s going to be uh a ton of stories and it’s going to be an amazing show because you know there’s so many big themes there going to be cars there’s going to be a ton of wearable things there’s a whole um Smartwatch Pavilion they’re going to be uh glass Smart Glass people coming out of the woodwork home automation The Internet of Things every buzzword you can think of these things are going to be shipping this year and many of these things are going to be announced yeah I’m I’m excited to see a a curved display that I want yeah I know I know we’re going to see a lot of those and I’m still not convinced that it’s anything I ever want y so show me a curved display that I want to buy yeah I know I need a curved display because when I have a a big iMac you have to kind of lean I shouldn’t lean you have to lean to to to see the edge right and so a curved curved display TVs curved display monitors are definitely something that uh that uh we all want so that’s our show that’s our first relaunch show I hope you enjoyed it we’re going to be uh harvesting all of your comments uh and I thank you for all of your words of encouragement and support uh upload the stories You’ like to see uh us cover on our subreddit technew today. rd.com email us at TNT twit.tv and also you know give us a call at 260 TNT show and visit the tech Newsday website at twit.tv sltn we’ll see you tomorrow [Music]