[Music] coming up on Tech news today kim.com triumphant return to the web Sony’s Getting Thinner and kick a bit Broadband for everyone in the US sorted all that more coming up netcasts you love from people you trust this is Twi bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cashfy at c.com [Music] this is Tech news today for Monday January 21st 2013 Tech news today is brought to you by Squarespace the fast and easy way to create a highquality website blog or online portfolio for a free trial and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts go to squarespace.com and use offer code tnt1 and they recently launched a develop platform for complete code control welcome to Tech news today I’m Tom Merritt I’m Sarah Lane I’m and I’m Jason howl and this is the show we keep you up to date on the most important stories in the tech World starting each time with the top 10 stories of the day in the news views finish good news and neutral news for Rim fans today Rim announced the official change of the name of the Blackberry appworld store to the BlackBerry World store store reflecting the coming edition of content like movies and music also Rim CEO Thorston hin told the German newspaper devel that Rim has not ruled out licensing Blackberry 10 to other manufacturers or selling Rim’s Hardware division Mega uploads successor Mega lets people upload and store files of any kind and went live on Sunday kim.com formerly known as Kim schmidtz the founder has said that the new site complies with the law and warned that any attempts to take it down would be fule police raids on offices and the home of.com led to the closure of mega upload last January atari’s us operations has filed for chapter 11 bankrupcy the US arm of Atari hopes that it can break free of its French parents if it does become independent the US Atari would then try to find a buyer to take the company private with CES behind us the announcement energy is beginning to focus on Mobile World Congress coming up in Barcelona Korean news site I news24 reports that Samsung’s JK Shin confirmed the 8 in Galaxy Note 8 phone will debut at Mobile World Congress Sony has introduced the tablet z a 10.1 in tablet which is thinner and lighter than anything from old little companies like Apple or Google it’s powered by a quad core 1.5 GHz processor has an 8 megapixel camera is 6.9 mm thick iPad I believe is n something will support LTE and will cost well we don’t know that part yet Sony hasn’t released where the Tablet Z will go on sale just yet either on Al kabaz a Dawson student who Dawson college student who found a security flaw in his school’s computer system was expelled from that school Al cabaz reported the flaw to his school and then tested to see if it had been fixed he was then accused of launching an attack on the network and Dawson College expelled alabas because his test endangered the school’s computer operations the new music Centric Myspace has over 50 million tracks but the Merlin Network says not all those tracks are properly licensed the agency say unlicensed tracks from more than 100 of its clients like labels beggar group Domino and merge can be found on the site Myspace says those tracks must have been uploaded by users and will be removed upon notification HTC’s new flagship device the HTC M7 rumored to launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month well now we’ve got some photos obtained by Android police so rimed specs for this phone include a 4.7 in display 1080p resolution which is 468 PPI pixel density a 1.7 GHz quad core qualcom processor in the images it’s also running since 5.0 that’s the next gen of HTC’s own OEM specific custom Android skin in the second of our rumor trifecta in the news views today PC mag passes along that a new report from UK’s computer and video games AKA CVG describes new controllers being tested for Sony’s next game console the next version of the PlayStation the report suggest the new controller might sport an LCD screen like the Wii U gam pad and also work in biometric features right into the grips and one more rumor a translated China Times report says that Apple will will introduce a larger 4.8 in iPhone with an 8 megapixel camera the report calls the larger phone the iPhone math and it would be released alongside the iPhone 5s in June Apple would then rev the iPhone again in the holiday season of 2013 with a 12 megapixel camera so if you’re keeping track China times says three new iPhones this year do the math that’ll be their that’ll be their advertising speaking of advertising uh this episode of tech news today brought to you by Squarespace the fast and easy way to create a highquality website blog or online portfolio uh the I I use it myself for several sites including sword and Laser our our our Science Fiction and Fantasy book club show that I do with Veronica Belmont and what’s what’s great about Squarespace is the new version gives you the best mobile experience you get Squarespace has develop new templates with mobile ready responsive designs means your site automatically restructures to look great on any brand smartphone tablet or computer when you add an image to your site seven different versions are created so you got the right size loading for the right device you have some massively large image trying to show up on a little 4inch screen and vice versa so your site looks professionally designed no matter what device someone is viewing on if you want your site to look good to look professional and you can focus on the cont content and the message of your website and the person who’s looking at it doesn’t have to think oh I guess I need to look at this on my laptop or desktop you want to try out Squarespace the best part is you can try it out absolutely free they have a great importer tool if you got a current blog you can just bring in your current blog see what it looks like play around with the temp templates change the colors pick different designs uh and you don’t have to do anything to try it out it’s absolutely free you don’t have to give them a credit card or nothing if you do decide to keep the service and pay for it do this uh use the offer code tnt1 and get 10% off your first purchases on new accounts that’s squarespace.com use that offer code tnt1 everything you need to create an exceptional website and we thank scor space for their support of tech news today joining us now to discuss the stories in the news Dana Walman senior reviews editor at in gadget welcome back to the show Dana great to have you back thanks so much for having me I’m glad I I’m sorry for you that you’re in the office on what is a holiday for many in the US but I’m glad for us that you were in the office so we could have you on the show yeah it’s like we were talking about before news is still flowing today so some of us still have to be cranking out stories right that’s right there’s no Martin Luther King Jr Day in New Zealand uh so we still got lots of stories coming out of there about kim.com relaunch of Mega well I guess not a relaunch it’s a news service very similar to mega upload uh it was launched on the one-year anniversary of the raid On’s house in New Zealand uh every body was there uh a lot of the people who were in jail a year ago today like programmer Bram Vander Koke CEO well CEO Tony lentino is new to the company actually CTO Matias artman was there last year uh and in fact uh over 500,000 signups they said 250,000 to 500,000 the numbers were bandied around and Matias Ortman said they’ve had to reboot the storage servers every hour they’re using cogent in Germany for that stuff uh and they’ve just been flooded a lot of press on this of course what Mega is is a file sharing service allw Dropbox give you 50 gabt of encrypted storage uh they’re very much emphasizing legal use they’ve got a new legal representative Robert Amsterdam on board of Amsterdam and partners along with their previous legal representation um the launch party was crazy kim.com kind of stuff faux raid pretend FBI agents repelling security guards and miniskirts weird stuff they’re at mega.co.nz and they plan to roll out a bunch of new services including Mega Box a music store Mega movies a movie store and something called Mega key now here’s the interesting part Mega key is a replacement for your ad blocker it’s a it’s a piece of software you download from Mega you install it on your browser right now Mega’s written in HTML 5 only works on Chrome they say they’ll roll it out to other browsers but when you run Mega key some of the time it replaces the ads you see with ads from Mega so it’s not an ad blocker it’s an ad replacer they say they’re only going to replace ads in search uh kim.com also said that it would only replace about 10% of the ads you see would never replace ads from any site that was outside the top 100 Alexa ranked sites so they only want to annoy the really big companies out there not the little guys Dana what what do you think of this kim.com is a controversial figure as it is uh it looks like he’s trying to nail down Mega into being a more legitimate filesharing service but he’s courting all kinds of controversy with this ad replacement side of it he is isn’t he um I’m rooting for him I I don’t know if that answers your question or what you’re getting at but um I’m rooting for him I sort of love the impishness of this whole exercise of him coming back a year later on the specific day that he came back offering such a generous package to users um and I’m in favor of the I not that I’m in favor of it you know that enthusiastically but I certainly don’t take issue in any way with the um the ad replacement I don’t have any ethical concerns about it the way I might with you know around around piracy um uh it will be interesting to see to what extent the courts come after him and to what extent he’s able to be as successful as he says he will I mean part of what makes this so fun is how certain he seems that his service is um lawsuit proof in a way yeah he he talks a lot about how they they’ve you know gone over all the legal aspects of everything they’ve made it bulletproof uh they they’re they’re encrypting things they’re making it so you can only share files with yourself you can still communicate with other users but that’s encrypted ours Technica has a story up kind of evaluating that encryption there’s some weirdness about how they’re they’re running the encryption given that it’s all written in HTML 5 uh but he does seem to be trying to tow the line more with the file sharing part of it uh and it’s not illegal for someone to download a piece of softare and run ad blocker so he argues like well if you run our software and do ad replacement you’re gaining credits that will allow you to legally acquire uh music and movies and we want to we want to strike deals with people AAS what do you make of all this well I mean it seems like do doesn’t know how to do anything small at least I mean this giant party and even even giving out 50 gigabytes of space that’s a lot more cloud storage than you normally get from any other service I think at least for free that’s really really impressive um it it seems like he’s learned his lessons from all that’s happened with mega upload in general trying to emphasize all the legal uses trying to make everything look more secure because to get people back I think that might be a little bit difficult because there’s a lot of services out there that you could use instead of this and if you’re constantly worried about this service being shut down you might not use it so if they have to really put together very impressive package to sign up a bunch of people I think that that you just sort of hit the nail in the head though is that he draws so much attention to himself in every way on purpose so this is a sort of thing where yeah okay maybe they have figured out pretty much how to close every you know legal loophole here and they have a legitimate service but people are going to find any reason any reason at all certain people of course who are not fans of uh mr.com to to take this site down and Tom you mentioned something like well this you know it’s a lot like what you could consider what Dropbox does as well I always wonder how much are other similar sites that offer cloud storage and a certain amount of gigabytes for free going to be affected by what ends up happening to Mega down the line when they do all actually become more and more similar well and one of the things that is differentiated a service like Dropbox uh from something like rapid share is that they actively discourage you from using it to share copy protected stuff they they they they make a good effort and they and they try to be good citizens uh somebody like kim.com in the past has sort of rubbed the industry’s nose in it he didn’t think he was operating illegally before he’s avoided extradition so far he hasn’t been brought up on on any you know he hasn’t been convicted of anything I I should say uh so he he his problem before I think was caused by his attitude more so than just exactly what he did and it seems like his attitude with this with this advertising thing is going to court more anger from people but I don’t know that that means that anybody can get at him does it maybe it does I don’t know we’ll have to keep an eye on it let’s uh let’s talk about thin thin is in again with Sony uh with the new tablet Z what’s up with this is all right so Sony’s int at least they’ve announced this new tablet it’s the Tablet Z it’s like two weeks after they introduced their experior Z so this is like their Flagship uh awesome tablet for specs quad core 1.5 GHz processor 10.1 in screen 1920 x 1200 resolution and an 8 megapixel camera 6.9 mm thin so it’s thinner than the Nexus 10 thinner than the iPad it weighs a little over a pound Which is less than the iPad and the Nexus and to get this the Tablet Z is both waterproof proof and dust proof but like Sarah mentioned pricing and availability not mentioned at all Dana do you think thin and light can wow people in the tablet space I mean that seems to be a big push for laptops but a thinner lighter tablet well which people are we talking about do you do you mean mainstream consumers or do you mean more people who read and Gadget who are just sort of obsessed with this sort of thing and you know read about this sort of thing just for the sake of tablets let’s go with consumers because I mean that they’re at the end of the line they people are going to buy it um I I think thinness helps but um I think that can backfire in the sense that a thin chassis like this I do question what size battery um can fit inside and I don’t mean to dwell so much on feeds and speeds but I think that is an important spec and I do think it can backfire in the sense that um you can have this really thin really sexy device but I think short battery life is the sort of thing that would cheese off even a consumer who didn’t let’s say know that much about tech technology um and I think also it depends what Sony has to bring on the software side I mean Sony can’t do that much to single-handedly contribute to the selection of Android tablet apps it’s always been a little bit of a weak point for Android tablets but Sony has been doing some interesting things on the software front just in terms of sharing your media and accessing it um on wireless devices in the home you know of like televisions and wireless speakers and stuff like that um so I think there’s so much that could make this interesting Beyond just the thinness which in and of itself as I said could be um a drawback in some ways in the end who knows what what about the dust proofness that’s kind of interesting what does that even mean like dust will be repelled away from the tablet you can’t get it Dusty no I think dust can’t get into the machine just like their experior the line of phones the idea is that it’s tougher so you don’t need to put a case on it do you think that’s going to make a difference the fact that you don’t need to you have a lot of these devices are super thin super light but you need to put a case on them with dust getting into their tablet now is that a thing is that a problem that people have well I think the idea is that well what about the waterproof part the water okay I’m kind of cool with that yeah you know you take it I don’t know if you’re at the beach or something you worry about it all that much less okay yeah I think um I think thinner and lighter is is is is almost always better uh when you’re talking about something like this that you you’d be holding perhaps for a long period of time um but otherwise it’s yeah it it it’s uh I think the tablets um are now adding things like hey you can get it wet and it won’t get too Dusty on top of specs that look a lot like other tablets I think Sony was trying to say like well it’s not just about thin because their big their big Advantage here is it’s the thinnest tablet out there right 6.9 millimeters thick you’re right Dana totally nailed it the the battery life I I think I read something that they think it’s like 66500 uh milliamp hour battery that’s that’s not great it’s Android 4 .1 uh the rest of the specs are good they’re not like Blow Me Away good but they’re they’re they’re fine I just I’m not seeing the thing that really makes me excited about this particular tablet uh thin is not enough for me maybe it is enough for sub dust proof and waterproof sounds like a gimmick see I could see people going into a store trying out the different tablets out there and then figuring out like when they pick this up they might go this is actually different enough that it’s it feels light a lot of people do complain about reading on an iPad saying it’s 1.5 lbs it’ll fall on my face and break my nose this thing’s a pound it’s less I mean it’s pretty it’s it’s pretty light I’m I’m pretty impressed with the concept of being pretty tough that’s the thing for me because I’m so sick and tired of getting these thin devices that get dinged or get busted because you need to put a case on them although I don’t know if you can throw this thing around or anything but to be waterproof i b maybe as a parent I’m like waterproof is good because people Kitchen in the kitchen that’s something that you know I never want to put my iPad too close to the sink because you never know what’s going to happen waterproof I have to worry about it a lot less Dana does a waterproof or dust proof make any difference does it sound like hype to you it could be you know this isn’t technically the first tablet that I’ve heard of that’s um been built as waterproof Pantech had one um Pantech obviously is not nearly as big of a brand especially in the US but they were selling a waterproof tablet through AT&T and I think that was sort of a dud so uh remains to be seen if Sony can turn it and and Sony’s marketing department can turn it into a bigger selling point than it has been in the past I agree with Sarah that I think especially in the kitchen it even if it’s not so much waterproof as Splash proof that could be useful but is that going to make people buy this as opposed to another tablet um it all depends on so many other things battery life app selection and of course the price which we don’t know um yeah what if this is really expensive yeah the price is going to make a huge difference uh on on the attractiveness of this I I think you’re right um meanwhile we all would like to have gigabit broadband like they have in Kansas City and uh it looks like the fcc’s got a plan to at least try to make that a reality yeah Julius Jen chowski spoke to a US mayor’s meeting it was took place in Washington DC and said I want to see gigabit speed Broadband services in all 50 states by 2015 so he’s specifically calling on Municipal leaders service providers to roll out gigabit speed broadband and at least one community in each of the 50 states in the US in the next 2 to 3 years so specifically it’s hey this is what I would like you to do as Municipal leaders he says if you’re participating in this it’s the gigabit city challenge and communities could turn themselves into hubs of innovation he says it’s proven to have worked in the past he said uh this is actually a quote if we build it Innovation will come the US needs a critical mass of gigabit communities Nationwide so that innovators can develop nextg applications and services that will drive econ IC growth and Global competitiveness he pointed to the fiber network uh that rolled out to 170,000 homes in Chattanooga we’ve talked about that before on this show um brought uh What uh the FCC says is about 3700 new jobs over the past three years directly related to the fact that uh there was a there was room for Innovation because of infrastructure what I think is interesting about this is this is it’s almost sort of his just NextGen uh initiative he talked about the national Broadband plan to Congress back in 2010 that was the goal of getting 100 megabits per second Broadband to 100 million households by 2020 so this is sort of another challenge that is is is it’s in a shorter period of time but it’s the same idea a I’ll start with you do you think sometimes I I I read all this and I’m like that sounds awesome but what he’s really saying is Municipal leaders who may or may not have some serious budget issues uh can you start rolling off uh rolling out this infrastructure structure that’s going to be very costly at the beginning with the hope that it would pay off a few years down the line as we’ve seen in a place like Chattanooga well I mean if the FCC chairman is telling you a municipal leader look you your economy is probably doing really poor one of the things you could do right now that’s going to pay off for years is build this infrastructure out or try to partner up with these other services like Google or any other company out there that does this I mean it it it’s it’s strange to think that internet speeds can make such a difference but they do because it’ll attract people like the Kansas City experiment where there’s a bunch of startups living in a house together they’re all doing these things where you just couldn’t do this with a slow speed if you want to conference with people anywhere in the country even I mean I guess technically if you had all these if you had all of these states that had all this fast speeds you could probably telecommute anywhere at that point having a much more traditional style of of office in a very untraditional style so I’m hoping that his suggestions are heard and actually listened to but I mean there’s been a lot of push back from private companies that just want to control all the pipes Dana do you think it’s uh overly optimistic to expect that this could be something that could roll out in all 50 states by 2015 it might be I mean it it I think um I think especially if you exclude companies like Google that um have a little more expertise and also a little more enthusiasm um and a lot more already vested in this I don’t know what happens if you leave it purely to Municipal leaders who maybe know a little bit less about the technology and and like you said have have some possibly more pressing priorities and a tighter budget but I’d be really curious to see how far the different states can get with cooperation you know with companies like Google and maybe others that um have more vested in this yeah I kind of I think I kind of think that’s the right way to go with this is challenge the municipalities to figure out how to make it happen not challenge the municipalities to build it themselves necessarily in some cases like Chattanooga that’s going to work uh in other municipalities it’s not but you need to remove the restrictions there’s there’s this kind of burgeoning movement out there in a few municipalities we’ve talked about it in the Carolinas before where competing isps get legislation put in place to prevent the municipalities from from encouraging this or building it themselves and I think that’s absolutely the wrong way to go I I feel like we’re finally getting to the point where we’re all starting to realize the internet is a utility it’s like water pipes it’s like electricity it’s like the fire department uh and so we need to figure out a model that efficiently delivers us that utility allows competition and service providers perhaps on the pipes but doesn’t allow these these defunct mon these deao monopolies of cable companies and telephone companies who then can just kind of sit back and go you know we’re not going to R roll out fiber anymore and we’re not really going to spend money at the rate that would increase a capacity the way we want so I like this okay Tom good sorry I thought thought you were gonna move on oh that’s all right let’s let’s let’s move on to to rim Tech crunch reports that Thorston Hines uh was speaking to the German newspaper devel uh talking about all kinds of things relating to rim and some of the headline grabbing quotes were about the possibilities after the launch of BlackBerry 10 he he said that Blackberry 10 is something they’ve been focused on they’ve been trying to retool to make it very good operating system and then once it’s launched they can start thinking about what else to do with Rim he said before you license the software you must show that the platform has a large potential first we have to fulfill our promises if such proof is happens licensing is conceivable so he’s not ruling out that once they launch Blackberry 10 and they show how good it is in his opinion they could license that out to other carriers uh also he said that they’re still under strategic review at and so they might sell the hardware side eventually uh they might not but that that’s not off the table either um I said the delay of BlackBerry 10 was caused because they want to Future prooof this they want to come out with an operating system that will be good for 10 years obviously with tweaks and building on it but that that it’s it’s adaptable it’s not just a smartphone operating system or even a tablet operating system but it’s available for embedded systems and all kinds of things that they can’t even predict all of these things seem to be the right things to be thinking about but the question is Ias can Rim deliver this can they put out an operating system in this Arena that’s dominated by Android and iOS that gets people excited and wanting to license it I don’t know if they’ll get people excited other than using like a big marketing campaign but I mean the fact that Rim is taken so long to put out this operating system and these phones in general it’s showing that they they don’t want to come out with some stop Gap Windows Phone 7 concept like oh here’s a thing that we we’re not going to support in a year uh Rim’s got a lot of work to make sure that people that are loyal to them because a lot of people still are loyal to Blackberry phones and their services they that they’ve built the right operating system that’s going to be around for a long time as for them licensing it out I mean that that could be an idea but it’s it just shows that at least rims got got a goal it’s just simple it’s like okay our phones need to work right now and these are going to be our op this is going to be operating system for a very long time other stuff we can talk about later Dana if you had to make a guess your best guess on the prospects for Blackberry 10 what do you think’s going to happen to it after launch will it be just popular will it will it keep Rim stable will it be really popular what do you think you know it it’s so hard to tell I think many of us in the tech industry have been a little bit disappointed by Rim in the past few years I think Rim is very good at building enthusiasm and excitement around its different launches and I think people are already hotly anticipating Blackberry 10 I heard a lot of people say that if they had snuck a Blackberry 10 handset onto the floor at CES they may have stolen the show and they probably would have gotten a lot of attention and I think I know I mean I I think that the OS looks interesting from what I’ve seen of it and I think a lot of people who I know in the industry agree um so I’m cautiously optimistic I guess we’ll we’ll see how um how well it’s received um I guess to A’s point they they have been moving very slowly and I don’t know if that’s shows that they’ve been respons responsible and that they’ve been very um fidus or that it means they haven’t gotten their act together so I’m just I’m cautiously optimistic and I hope that if it gets to the point where they are licensing the software it’s not out of desperation but because they actually have an amazing product that they can sell to other companies and and like say we certainly don’t see Nokia wanting to license another operating system right away obviously uh Android is probably the dominant operating system for somebody like Samsung uh so I don’t know maybe an LG or an HTC would be willing to to take a flyer on this if it gets some attention uh Sarah do you do you think you see people using uh Blackberry os10 uh black in in the future in in in large numbers you going to see it on the bus you’re going to see it on the train well you know somebody in chat said something like uh to to az’s point that some people really do still care about Blackberry said I I don’t um I’m not loyal but I have to use it for work so I think that that um uh in the Enterprise is is going to be very very interesting going forward because the folks who still use blackberries in the Enterprise as long as Blackberry 10 works great you know everybody’s familiar with it I don’t see there to be a huge mass Exodus but will any businesses adopt Blackberry 10 as part of what uh their employees use at work that haven’t already been loyal to Blackberry I think they really need something like that or this is just going to continue to be Blackberry holding on money in the bank but not innovating and growing in market share and they’re going to have to compete the perception that that blackberries are just for business Samsung has an an ad out right now that sort of hammers away at that takes pot shots at iOS in that ad too but it makes Blackberry look like the the old out of touch person’s uh device and and they’re that’s what their marketing is going to have to battle against let’s let’s talk about path path is doing a little marketing spin of their own trying to cast Facebook what is a Chevy what well okay yeah there is a headline um on on tuck runch that says Dave Moren CEO of path says if Facebook is a Chevy then we’re a BMW so every goes wo Now Dave Moren used to work at Facebook so there’s there there’s there’s a there’s there’s a lot going on here what he meant I Believe by this is Facebook is the network where you can have many many many friends we’re all connected lots of data it does a lot of things for a lot of different people path is more of a specific performance Performance Machine it’s a smaller Network it’s a closed Network you can have up to 150 friends or less you’re sharing more about the stuff that you care about with people that you care about more it’s more of that specific time of type of machine so I don’t think he was really saying you know we’re luxury and Facebook is very pedestrian uh he was speaking at the dld conference that’s happening in Munich Germany right now and uh he he actually has quite a bit of interesting information about where the company expects to go in the next year by the way I am a very heavy path user I have exactly 150 friends and every time someone adds me that I would like to have as my friend you know I got to like who’s got to be dropped who’s not using this enough the service has been extremely buggy lately I mean it is I don’t know what’s going on with their servers right now but I have to assume that’s there’s a lot going on behind the scenes where some of the stuff I’m about to talk about will roll out sooner than later because uh path is in some sort of a transition says that they want to moveed to more Quantified self-type applications so Nike fuel band is something that path had uh officially integrated with so that you could post your fuel band score in uh your friends timelines uh he said we we spend a lot of time thinking about 100 people or less so some of the most popular types of path content are things like when people go to bed and when people wake up you don’t need too much of that but with path there’s some sort of a sweet spot that they believe really works because again there’s just not that many people that you’re sharing it with he also says China is one of their top five markets and he thinks that it has to do with the fact that uh particularly in China and and other Asian cultures uh there’s a lot of emphasis on family that a lot of families are using this so it’s not so much about 150 friends it’s maybe about you know your 12 closest family members that private closed nature uh he also says uh their new search engine on path which was introduced gosh o in October I believe um because of that introduction traffic had gone up 40% um and the service uh for search is right now only available in English so as they roll out other languages Spanish is next um and then uh Japanese Indonesian Korean Chinese are all all in the way um they see more and more uh use there and then he also mentioned this is like I wasn’t really sure about this that they currently provide premium filters and that they’ll be rolling out new categories of virtual Goods in the first half of this year uh I don’t know anything about any premium filters on path that’s not something that I know to be offered at all I can’t filter anything I was just trying to figure out how does path make money I can’t remember I don’t see any ads on there uh I was reading that the Nike deal doesn’t give them any money so I’m really not sure what they’re going to do to stay around this idea of like Hey we’re really private and we’re really great and we’re luxury but are you going to be around in the next six months premium filters sound like a good idea at least there’ll be some kind of revenue generated there and path will continue but I mean if you’re just sitting around waiting to get bought by somebody else that’s not the best business model well you know according according to Moren they’re certainly not waiting on to get bought by a bigger company like Facebook they’re rolling out uh premium subscriber services uh this year Moren says that this is stuff that might not even be interesting to a normal user but intense users will want more options and may pay for that that’s another thing that kind of gets me is like I I know some of you are are watching or listening and saying you know path either it doesn’t appeal to me or 150 friends I don’t you know I have like five people that I know that are on path so for someone like me yeah maybe if it was a cool premium service that helped me use it better I might pay for it but I just can’t imagine that the majority of their users would care Dan there’s four premium filters on here that are 99 cents a piece oldtime the grid Loco and 8bit oh Premium Photo filters okay so I’m thinking like you can filter out people or or put people in different folders where is this premium filter that I don’t know anything about photo filters yes that’s true would you pay for a m feature yes there you go sure would they need different types of filters well I Dana are you are you a big path user does this sound like they’re on you know they’ve got a road map to uh financial success in 2013 I admittedly um I I don’t use it so I’m not invested in it the way you are but um the idea of paying for photo filters that’s a really dangerous thing not dangerous but it it’s a little bit of a tricky concept um just I I don’t think it’s something people are used to to paying for and I don’t know how well that worked for say picnic before it was bought by Google um remember the online photo editor um you could in that case too you could sort of pay extra for certain funky filters but I think the most obvious thing would be to just skip the ones you had to pay for um I could be wrong I think people either will go to the services where they can get that for free or just use the things that they can quickly get without having to pay for them um not not in general but at least as far as like something like a photo filter um that does seem like kind of a peculiar way to plan on making money for a service like this don’t you think yeah Tom what do you think I know that you use you and I have talked about uh how we enjoy path and is nice to uh have the closes network does it uh you know they’re certainly not on on a path to a billion users or anything along the lines of Facebook but then again it doesn’t sound like they’re interested in that yeah I I don’t think they are interested and I think that’s smart they’re they’re trying to carve out their own path I agree with Dana 99 cent 8 bit filtered not getting me excited maybe I’m not the target market either maybe people there are people who are really into these photo filters uh would be willing to to pay that but even then it looks like you buy a filter once you get to use it you can even restore your previous purchases so they’re not selling them over and over and over again there’s only four of them obviously path is still early days they make all their money from venture capitalist so they’re just trying things out to kind of see what catches fire I’m I’m C very curious about virtual goods and that sort of thing I pretty much use path just to track my running with the Nike app I I almost don’t use it anymore for anything else although my sister who is kind of an early indicator of what might actually catch on with the average consumer out there does use path and she’s one of the few people who comments on my path postings actually Sarah’s probably the other one uh so I I I I I think you know you’re on the path to ability users no uh but do they have a future yeah I I I think they’re doing the right things to find out what works let’s finish up with France proposing an internet tax right so France they they’re talking about uh taxing the collection of personal data now the idea came from a report entitled taxation of the digital economy commissioned by President Francois Anand the French think that some internet companies like Google Amazon and Facebook are avoiding taxes in France they do a lot of business there uh France’s argument is this you collect very valuable here you don’t pay taxes users in our country are effectively working for your services without pay by providing personal info that gets that lets Google sell advertising as an example Google actually generates about 1.5 billion euros in advertising Revenue in France but doesn’t pay a whole lot of taxes in France um and this is how we work the report says that tax rates would be based on the number of users and internet firm tracked and that would be verified by outside Auditors uh Tom do you think a tax like this that France is proposing would that make companies think twice about reaching out and collecting data at in France well it’s going to cause a bunch of uh complications to figuring out well who who is this user that wants to sign up for my service are they in France if so then uh you know do I want to collect data from them or do I want to try to avoid the tax uh it’s it’s complexity and and complexity added to the internet usually fails uh usually companies root around it or they just don’t provide the service in that area I I yet why when you look at the budget of France right now you want to come up with uh new ways to to generate revenue and I and I actually get the logic behind saying hey you know what you’re you’re asking our our people to give you data uh you know and so that’s something that uh we can we can legitimately say you know you’re you’re hiring them so we’re going to tax that I get that logic but I don’t think it washes I mean it’s it’s an exchange uh you you give data you get something out of the company usually uh and and that’s not not a monetary value I I don’t think it’s a very good idea Dana do you think a move like this by France would be like overreaching to companies that aren’t even in their their borders I think it’s it’s overreaching and I’m not quite sure if it’s it seems to be presented as I wonder if this is already covered by the terms of service do you know what I mean um the fact is nobody is forced to use Google services um to read Google News to use Gmail to use Google search and um this is sort of to Tom’s point I don’t I feel like the transaction between the data and the and the internet company is sort of implicit especially and maybe explicit in the terms of service so I’m not really sure if there was really any room for ambiguity here um if the that that that’s what confuses me here yeah and I don’t know if I see it as a monetary trans action per se I’m looking at this I’m thinking there you know if if if Google Google’s got good lawyers or tax lawyers which they do they’re probably going to figure a way around this anyway so this idea that France trying to tax data collection either they will figure it out technically or they’ll figure it out following the rules maybe you should pay a percentage of your data to France since it’s not a monetary transaction no not buying it I’m not buying that no all right well let’s buy North Korea then in the randomizer where is uh Eric Schmidt’s daughter was along for the trip on the delegation that went to North Korea uh we talked about Eric Schmidt traveling to North Korea and pressing for more internet connectivity there he was along with uh Governor Bill Richardson her account of the trip is getting a lot of attention and it’s really very interesting she’s put up a Picassa album of photos that she was allowed to take there uh and a and a nice long description on her Google site about the trip uh so you know get a chance go read it Court a nice summary of it and with with links out to the different things she talks about an internet Center that they were brought in that she was said was very much like a patkin village it seemed like it had just been set up for their uh Amusement for their benefit and that people weren’t even necessarily typing or clicking in a lot of cases they were just sort of sitting there staring at the screens uh did did any of you guys get a chance to take a look at this I love all things nor well you know what that’s going to sound weird yeah am fascinated by people who take trips to North Korea the pictures that they come back with the stories that they have and how much of it all seems to be smok and mirrors and whoever is the guest is sort of carefully led to particular places and told specific things and yeah this is it’s it’s fascinating to me it really is yeah exactly you want to say I love it because you love hearing about it it doesn’t mean that you actually love certainly not is fascinating uh to get a look it’s almost like a controlled experiment because it’s it’s it’s so tightly controlled and so any look into it uh is is just really fascinating and this is this is a very interesting perspective on it not just the pictures which obviously she’s going to be restricted in what things she’s allowed to see and take pictures of although she said they never stopped her from taking any pictures so they obviously kept her in areas where it was okay but uh her description of sort of the mistakes that were made along the way or the things that they weren’t allowed to do uh the form that they filled out uh it’s really really really quite interesting so I I recommend taking a look let’s move on to the calendar we’ve got a lot of earnings this week and up tomorrow IBM Google and Verizon are all announcing their earnings January 22nd all right earnings time again is let’s see what’s incoming incoming message we got email from Josh in Greenville South Carolina hey T&T crew I work for a non-tech Fortune 500 company that also proudly boasts being a Fortune’s 100 top companies to work for I think I can shed some light on this list and why some great companies don’t appear on it the number one reason why uh the number I can’t speak today the number one reason why is something people most most people don’t know companies actually have to apply to be on it they submit a campaign on why they deserve it and a small random sample of employees get sent a questionnaire so if Apple doesn’t appear on the list it’s more like more than likely due to the fact they didn’t even apply to be on it yeah I I didn’t realize that that was the case uh that you have you have to almost campaign uh to get on the list because the list does seem to be generally pretty comprehensive so I guess most companies participate in that I can definitely see uh if this is all true Apple’s just sort of being like no we don’t we don’t even want to be in a competition we don’t want to be on a list with 100 other 99 other companies even if we’re number one we do our own thing they probably don’t want the employees getting a questionnaire and filling it out that’s probably it’s like you stay quiet right yeah you don’t get to say that this is the best company to work for just work I never worked at a company that that required me to do this there were other campaigns at seen at networks before CBS bought them where they’re like hey fill out the survey but it wasn’t the fortune one Dana have you ever run into this no never yeah um I work for a I I think AOL um I I my guess is that AOL would like to be featured on um something like this I’ve never actually had to fill out a survey or anything like that um but no very different corporate environment uh no one telling us to keep quiet about how well we’re treated or anything like that how how how how you’re treated at all that’s good to know well that and that that is it uh for this episode of the show uh Dana thanks so much for joining us it’s always good to have you along uh obviously senior reviews editor at a gadget but let folks know where they can find you online follow what you do oh uh yeah thanks for having me um I’m at engadget.com and um if you want to follow me on Twitter I might just my full name Dana Walman w l l m an for those on the audio podcast uh definitely worth a follow and you can find us on our subreddit technew today. rd.com is the place where you can submit stories let us know what kinds of things you’d like us to talk about as well as vote on the submissions of others you can find us on the web at twit.tv TNT you can email us our email address is TNT twit.tv and give us a call leave us a voicemail our phone number is 260 TNT show we’ll be back tomorrow with Brian Dunning as our guest see you [Music] then