coming up on Tech news today the NSAA outrages Google with a fiber tap smartphones now allowed during takeoff and Landing sort of and Sprint promises 1 gabit per second internet in the future all that 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 f l [Music] y.com this is Tech news today for Thursday October 31st 2013 Tech news today is brought to you by gazelle the fast and simple way to sell your used gadgets find out what your used iPhone iPad and other Apple products are worth at gazelle.com and by Squarespace the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website for folio or online store for a free trial and 10% off go to squarespace.com and use offer code tnt1 welcome to Tech news today I’m Tom Merritt I’m AA Zar I’m Jason H Sarah Lane is in nevado California and she will join us as soon as she gets there there’s some really bad uh Bridge traffic in San Francisco but let’s kick off Today’s Show with the top 10 stories of the day in the news views The Washington Post reported an another Edward Snowden leak yesterday describing project muscular a joint operation of the US’s NSA and the UK’s gcq project allegedly Taps Fiber Optic Cables between data centers for both Google and Yahoo if true this would allow the spies to see almost all data used by the two Services as they sync their data centers across four different continents it also has the advantage of being outside the US therefore not subject to laws prohibiting domestic surveillance meanwhile if you’re wondering what Stone’s doing for vodka money these days uh his lawyer announced he starts work in November for a major Russian website that remains unnamed somebody’ll leak it soon for sure IDC reports that the iPad is the number one tablet in the world but its market shares now 29.6% in the in Q3 of this year in Q3 of 2012 Apple had a whopping 40.2% Samsung is still number two with 20.4% of the world stage rounding out the top three is the Transformer loving Asus with 7.4% AT&T’s eff to gain more market share in Europe by acquiring local telecoms could be affected by recent leaks of NSA surveillance data European officials tell the Wall Street Journal AT&T is implicated along with Sprint and Verizon in the government’s data collection the fisa Amendments act allows the NSA to request all phone metadata records from the companies quote we’d need to have a concrete discussion to make sure that European data wouldn’t be leaving Europe one official told the journal Pandora is now available on Google’s chomecast dongle an update to Pandora’s Android and iOS mobile apps will now include a cast button which will allow for One Touch streaming to the TV Pandora users can stream to chomecast from Android smartphones and tablets as well as iPhones but not yet iPads the company says iPad support is coming soon Sarah Lane has reached Northern Nado the US FAA announced today it will allow use of portable electronic devices during takeoff and Landing as long as they’re in airplane mode Airlines have to submit a plan to comply with the new regulations so don’t expect to be able to do this right away but the FAA expects most implementations to be in place by the end of the year there are also a few models of airplanes not proved to be tolerant of devices and in low visibility conditions you may still be asked to turn off your device during takeoff and Landing Delta hopes to have its plan in place and ready to go by November 1st Facebook reported its quarterly financials and 49% of its advertising Revenue came from mobile usage that’s an increase of 8% from the last quarter Facebook’s total advertising Revenue was $1.8 billion Facebook’s desktop vertising Revenue fell $26 million from the second to third quarter looks like that little social network is going to make it Yay good job little social network steam’s active accounts Rose 30% over the last year to 65 million according to valve one contributing factor is valve’s most popular game Dota 2 with more than 500,000 daily Peak concurrent players in comparison Xbox Live has reported 48 million accounts while Sony’s Playstation network claims 110 million Sprint has introduced Sprint Spark an enhanced LTE service it says will deliver unprecedented speeds to its cell phone users the company demoed the service running at one gigabit per second but the company says customers can expect 50 to 60 megabits per second Peak speeds today with increasing speed over time the first Spark supporter phones will be the Samsung Galaxy Mega the Galaxy S4 Mini the LG G2 which will all be available on Sprints Network on November 8th Sarah Lane has reached olm poly State Park Cisco announced Wednesday it is open sourcing its h.264 video Codec implementation and released a plug-in that allow thirdparty developers to use h264 without paying any licensing costs gigo reports Mozilla will add h264 to the Firefox browser in the first half of 2014 why is this important well the internet engineering task force is meeting in Vancouver next week to decide on a default codec for web RTC that’s the standard that allows video communication over the internet without any special software so goodbye Skype Google has been pushing its vpa codec for the standard Cisco has invested a lot of money in the software and Hardware that relies on h264 and would like it to last at least until the next Generation like h265 vp9 or Dolla takeover and that’s many years down the road remember that wacky hyperloop rail system that Elon Musk proposed well according to a new company called hyperloop Transportation Technologies a prototype of the hyperloop will be ready by 2015 the company published a two-year timeline of the project hyperloop Transportation Technologies also announced a number of Partnerships with a including one company called ansys which created some of the first software simulations of the hyperloop this episode of 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just take a minute go there and find out do it now because your iPhone may lose value the longer you wait gazelle.com we thank them for their support of tech news today all right joining us now to discuss the stories of The Day news editor from Giga ohm Tom kit Tom are you a Red Sox fan actually no um okay I’m a Mets fan which is a lower form of life entirely um but I spent 10 years in Boston and and got a little attached to the socks and so you have Red Sox leanings I I yes they’re my American League can I say that I don’t know that’s all right we’ll we’ll let it pass then sorry Tom that’s okay no congratulations to the Boston Red Sox winners of the World Series over my favorite St Louis Cardinals but it was a hardfought series well done uh let’s let’s talk about technology news though for those of you who hate the sports ball maybe you’ll love this the NSA is spying on Google and Yahoo as we mentioned yeah exactly woohoo cheers uh this is this is pretty disturbing and and it’s you know one of the one of the poll quotes from this is from The Washington Post story where they showed this to Google Engineers who swore loudly when they saw this one little handwritten uh description of what’s going on essentially Google and Yahoo they have data centers across multiple content continents and they lease or own fiber interconnects between those data centers that they thought were secure and so they sync all this data sometimes Archives of email and stuff go to these data centers so that they’re closer to the places that people might be requesting them what seems to have happened is the gchq in the UK along with the NSA uh put in place project muscular which is a buffer that Taps these fiber interconnects outside the data center and holds three to five days of traffic decodes the proprietary data formats in which they’re transferred and then filters for certain information and sends that data to Fort me Maryland now Eric Hessel doall from All Things D points out that the fiber has to be regenerated every 50 miles so that’s one point where they could have put in a tap one of these regeneration points along the fiber lines he also points out that the USS Jimmy Carter is outfitted for intelligence collection on undersea cables and that is a ship that could have possibly implemented something like this uh the NSA for their part says that they apply attorney general approved processes to protect the privacy of us persons minimizing the likelihood of their information in our targeting collection processing exploitation retention and dissemination no comfort for foreigners there but it it’s supposed to comfort you to trust that they won’t spy on you they promise uh they also deny that they’re operating under executive order 12333 which describes limits over collection of data on US citizens overseas which we go along with them saying we’re only collecting it on non- US citizens Google’s David Drummond he’s the chief lawyer says we are outraged at the length to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks and it underscores the need for Urgent reform Yahoo just says hey we have controls in place and we don’t cooperate with the NSA and let them do this uh so we’re not sure why they’re doing it Tom this these Revelations just seem to get worse and worse we’re starting to kind of get used to them uh it’s not any surprise is it at this point that that this is going on it’s not the surprise that it’s going on it’s it’s the methods and the techniques that are being used that I think are you know more and more surprising every time the drip drip of this news is been kind of crazy you know it’s like Snowden gave a a document dump to Greenwald and the guard and all these other organizations and then they’re just trickling them out little by little as we learn kind of about these things and you know that to me has been kind of crazy that they’re I can’t imagine they put all the best stuff first you know like I’m I’m pretty sure there’s other shoes to drop like with this information so I mean I don’t I you know it’s kind of amazing to think about the extent of which of what can be done well and they obvious apparently if you read the report they went to Google and and talked to the engineers here before they reported the story so different different stories are going to take different amount of confirmations to to find out if they’re likely and and and get some some other confirmation of what’s in the Leakes right I really like that anecdote too cuz I think it was really maybe finally the time where Google said I have had enough of this you know they they it was like a line that had been crossed that they were like not just you know it was one thing for Google to comply with laws they don’t like their laws they have to comply with them but it’s another thing for the NSA to be like tapping into the links between them and and their other data centers and I mean that’s what they were doing right they weren’t like hacking into their data centers exactly they were you know sort of stealing the mail as it was in transit that’s what it sounds like if you read this report uh is that they were they were they were outside the data center somehow and and intercepting the fiberlink and Google’s been encrypting this traffic since I want to say last summer um or at least last year so it sounded like you know at some point Google sort of maybe got wise to the fact that this was going on and then you know started you know encrypting more more and more traffic so I mean to me the smiley face on the on the picture though makes the whole thing it’s like the NSA has evolved from art to hand right there you know that’s it’s I don’t know if that’s Evolution I wonder if any of this stuff has motivated Google to do their crazy moonshop projects with like Project Loon these data floating Data Centers do they would want to just basically say look we’re tired of getting spied on we can figure out our own way around you because if this it seemed strange that they were doing these projects but as we find out more and more they’re being tapped every which way if they were making their own network to be look we’re secure because no matter what’s going on the government’s always going to be looking at us we can have our own network that’s a kind of a a hairbrain idea but it I wonder if it actually motivated this company to do some of the things that we thought was were strange at first but now it’s starting to make more sense why they would basically be building their own internet well it’s an arms race right I mean like any kind of security thing it’s like you try to stay one step ahead of the guy who’s trying to break into your thing and you know so yeah I mean I wonder if that has motivated a lot of their um alternative network uh maybe Dave in the chat room thinks maybe that’s what that barge is they’re going to barge into international waters he says so they can’t get monitored although apparently if you’re in international waters you can still get monitored in fact that’s the preferred way of project muscular well that’s depressing good yeah exactly that’s depressing but all too common I mean how long have we been talking about this you know and there’s more to come so it’s like since May right yeah yeah you’re becom desensitized to this unfortunately just keeps rolling out uh and it and it is building more and more support in the US Congress to do something to change how this operates and they’re a very effective bunch of people so I can see that they’re efficient doesn’t take much does it all right let’s uh let’s talk about something more fun how about gigabit per second wireless connectivity someday that’ll probably be monitored as well who knows right so Sprint introduced Sprint Spark It’s it’s LTE service that Sprint’s saying unprecedented speeds now here’s how this works uh Sprint actually has three different frequencies for its faster speed uh Network they had they have an 800 MHz frequency at 1.9 gigahertz a 2.9 GHz cellular band and what their phones are going to be able to do is they’re going to be able to switch seamlessly between these three networks uh Sprint has claimed in the lab they’ve enabl and they demoed this 1 gbit per second wireless they’re claiming 50 to 60 megabits Peak speeds for actual consumers when this rolls out uh Dan hessie made a comment about Sprint’s Unlimited Plan he’s saying the unlimited plans aren’t going anywhere even when spark comes out they’re still going to be unlimited uh roll out begins today with limited availability in New York La Chicago Miami and Tampa Sprints claiming 100 cities by 2016 Tom kit do you think these crazy fast Wireless speeds Promises of unlimited data can this do anything for Sprint to topple AT&T or Verizon well yeah I mean it it all depends on how you know well they actually roll out I mean you Wireless lab demos are kind of ridiculous right they’re like science fair projects they don’t you know when you when you suddenly introduce things like buildings and and bridges and trees in into the middle of you know a wireless environment your speeds kind of tend to vary um but you know I mean I mean it’s the continual March of this stuff though right like it’s getting to the point where Wireless speeds can rival you know wir line speeds and you know there’s going to be a horse race between those companies as well to see who can you know provide the fastest and you know it’s not just the fastest though it’s the most reliable service I mean you know if it’s fast but you can’t always get it when you want it it doesn’t really matter so it’s they got to work worry about both sides of that coin and Sprint’s playing catchup right now they’re playing ketchup in a couple ways actually the LTE roll out is catchup so they got to make it sound better than just well now we have LTE too and we’re last to the table but they’re also playing catch up with T-Mobile and remember AT&T and Verizon are leading the pack here T-Mobile’s trying to catch up by saying we’re more flexible we don’t overcharge you uh we’re the we’re the bargain platform we’re the consumer friendly platform and Sprint uh is not doing that so they got to have something and and speed is a good way to grab some headlines I just don’t know how many people trust that they’re really going to get those speeds and whether that really changes people to go to Sprint although paired with the unlimit it makes a little more compelling case I suppose coverage area is definitely the major thing that Verizon’s got going they they claim that I think they’ve converted all of their 3G networks to 4G networks AT&T claims the fastest speed at this point Verizon’s been doing tests and people have seen this uh just anecdotally 80 megabits per second with their next version of Lte I think Sprint’s idea of trying to marry the three bands together that they can switch off so they would have an increased coverage area even though they don’t really have the this the widespread coverage of a Verizon r&t that might give them an Edge slightly no pun intended with Edge there I hopefully it’ll be more like 4G remember Edge God I don’t like Edge and I remember cuz it’s still on T-Mobile when I have bad days Sprints always had a lot of really cool Network assets that they’ve never actually managed to put together so you know maybe this is the time that they can finally do it all right it seems that Sarah has entered the parking garage and we should see her she right here and even even one here your mic is live now Sarah I’m I got to look at this she’s she’s got to look at the uh coming into this a little late used to it if you’re listening to the audio version there might be something slightly different about the way I look today cuz it is Halloween have we not talked about this yet I thought your color had drained from your face I well when we were talking about the NSA stuff it really scared you white yeah it just drains my blood and it’s uh it’s really disheartening you remember the makeup gun from The Simpsons kind of like that would if that worked this morning that would have been much faster I want to tell you that took a lot much lot of time hi Sarah it’s good to see you this has been such a weird morning I’m sorry about the traffic Saran what’s that Tom I said I’m sorry about the traffic but you have good news to talk about uh if you’re ready with the uh the FAA saying hey you don’t have to put your Kindle away during takeoff correct Tom this is really good news so the the story is is that uh the FAA has basically we’ve heard for a while now that they were going to relax some of its restrictions on the idea that you can’t have an Electronics device you know powered on during takeoff and Landing now they say don’t get too crazy about it just yet because the changes will have to differ depending on each Airline depending on a particular kind of plane that you’re in and how things are run at each different carrier however most will be able to allow passengers to use their Gadgets in airplane mode gate to gate by the end of the year so personal electronic devices which the FAA calls peeds uh they say the the reason that that it’s going to be somewhat of a slow roll out is because the airlines have to make changes and then sub submit basically come back to the FAA and say uh uh give us a safety assessment give us approval then we can change our personal electronic device policy and then the passengers can can keep their can keep their devices on but you know airplane mode is fine and good that means that you can play games during takeoff and Landing you could be watching movies during takeoff and Landing stuff that obviously doesn’t you know you’re not going to be able to use your cell service you’re not going to be able to make a phone call but you would be able to if the plane included Wi-Fi you there wouldn’t be some sort of a uh a limit when you drop down below a certain number of feet on the airplane where the Wi-Fi cuts out so conceivably you could have internet the entire time as well for people like me that makes flying just an absolute Joy you can also uh as far as like ebook readers and you know maybe you’re holding your iPad or whatever you can choose not to Stow your electronic device you could choose to hold it in your lap if you so desire kind of like a purse I guess as long as it’s not really really big I don’t know I’m super excited about this I always thought it was kind of funny that you could have like a 10 pound copy of Stephen King’s It sitting on your lap watching a plan like but you couldn’t have a little Kindle you know like he was GNA like Hur somebody you know balls ahead of you instead of the well the idea that the uh like like a big old iPad shouldn’t just be sitting out on a seat without you holding it makes sense to me right same same way that the 10 pound Stephen King book shouldn’t just be sitting out on the seat either you should have it in your hands and so that that never washed for me as a as a reason that this ban was in place and they’ve been very careful about making sure that there’s not going to be interference etc etc but I’m glad they finally got around to figuring that out uh especially since almost everyone I’m not I’m not going to point name any names but I bet most of you in the audience don’t turn your actual iPads or Kindles off when you put them away you just put them out a site anything with an on or off switch must be totally powered down I mean who does that you know my iPad doesn’t have an on or off switch it’s it’s got I mean are you guys are you guys like just admitting that you don’t power your stuff off I mean I know I know that sometimes people don’t but there are other people who get really upset about that sort of thing yeah I’ve seen enough people on the airplane like they they get really nervous and they’re staring with that guy still using their iPhone you’re like we’re something bad’s going to happen something bad’s goingon to happen nothing I’m never worried about something bad happening I am I am worried that that there’s going to be some conflict with the flight attendant it’s going to delay our takeoff because they’re having an argument that’s why I usually glare at those people they don’t make you turn your devices off on Air Force One and if they don’t make you turn your devices off on Air Force One then I think it’s probably okay fair enough yeah yeah well I for one am excited about these new uh restrictions being lifted Candy Crash gate to gate Yeah by by the end of the year in the United States and and hopefully it will be a Candy Crush playing World all over the globe by the end of next year would We complain about on planes now though the internet speed the Terri the food’s been done to death you won’t be able to make calls or connect your LTE now but that then that’s the next thing right people could get away with uh not turning it off by leaving it in Airplane Mode now that airplane mode is the rule people leave it on and they’ll sneak calls so it’s just the evolution of getting around the rules good luck with getting a connection evolution of jerks there is some Wi-Fi uh International on international flights being played with these days so that’s kind of promising as well you may actually be able to Surf while going to Japan or something let’s take a quick break and thank our other sponsor for today’s show squarespace.com the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create your own professional website portfolio or online store now you’ve heard me talk about using Squarespace from a book site or for sordan laser.com but Jason Hal you’ve been using it too I have you know they actually just rolled out and I didn’t hear a whole lot about this until I started kind of redesigning my site uh in advance of the album that I’ve been working on I’m kind of almost ready to uh unveil that officially and they actually have new functionality for musicians which is really kind of cool um you can upload your music and it has like a full album streamer displays the album art you can play all the different tracks and kind of list any like purchase information really really useful for musicians if you want to just kind of host your music on Squarespace of course they also have kind of the Commerce stuff behind that as well if you want to sell your music but really cool stuff um tailored to musicians they’ve been tailoring to artists and you know a lot of other creative kind of uh divisions for such a long time it’s nice to see them work in the musician aspect too and I’m totally using it I love it it’s great for all kinds of uses like that starts at $8 a month includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year and if and if Jason wants to start selling his albums on there he can do that too it’s integrated to work with every squares space template it can sell physical or digital Goods MP3s or CDs and it’ll get one interface for order management tracking orders customizable customer email updates printing shipping labels and adding coupons plus it’s in multiple countries 10 countries around the world Why not start a trial you don’t have to give them a credit card number even just go to squarespace.com start building your website when you decide to sign up for the Squarespace service make sure to use the offer code tnt1 to get 10% off and to show your support for Tech Tech news today and we thank Squarespace for their support of tech news today uh they’ve been a fantastic supporter of the show keeping us on the air Squarespace everything you need to create an exceptional website I uh came across this on techmeme today it’s a fizz. org uh article about an EU funded project named Pursuit that wants to eliminate the need for servers now it doesn’t say they’re going to ban servers but they’re going to say you won’t need servers if you want to distribute content and they think it will actually be more efficient it’ll be faster be more secure give you better control of your private info and no more server crashes it’s essentially using an internet-wide peer-to-peer approach so if you understand how bit torrent works you kind of understand how this would work the idea is that when you download content uh you would also publish that content and anyone who has the rights to access it would be able to get it and those rights would be a fingerprint that’s on that information they won the future internet assembly award after successfully demonstrating applications using this uh you can go to www. fp7 pursuit. SLP Pursuit web if you want to learn more about it uh but essentially they’re saying instead of URLs un Universal resource locators saying the content is over there and now everyone has to go over there to get it you’d use Uris Universal resource indicators saying look around maybe someone nearby you on the network has this and then you can get a piece of it from them a piece of it somewhere else you don’t have to wait for servers every time you download content uh you can also control access to data their example in their video is of somebody who wants to share data from their heart monitor but they only want their doctor and Emergency Services Personnel to see it and they could do that because they don’t have to put it on a server and also be sharing it with the cloud services provider which you have to do if you have it on a remote server here they’re just saying we’re going to publish the data it’s going to get copied out there but only these two types of people can access it now this is a little bit pie in the sky and and I have haven’t g into all the details that would really vet it to make sure you know how it works but granted that this is getting a lot of review and a lot of eyes are on it there’s a lot of discussion around it Tom what do you think I don’t know you know I wasn’t familiar with this project before the first thing I’m wondering is sort of how you know we’ve been talking a lot about surveillance and we’ve been talking a lot about you know all that stuff that’s going on but data is important for Publishers in a lot of different ways right like you sort of need to know how your content’s being distributed and who’s reading it and and you know how that’s going out so I’m wondering you know from a purely selfish editorial business standpoint like what this would mean um you know it seems like it would be really easy for um a lot of different applications like the one you mentioned though the medical one is a really interesting one just because there’s so many you know pitfalls that potentially lie with sharing of that data so that that’s interesting but yeah I don’t really know all the details of this one yeah I mean you would have to uh assume it would be harder to surveil if things are more distributed because you couldn’t just go to the server you couldn’t go to the data center and think you’re going to get everything and it would be harder to do the you know the man in the middle thing where you just sort of tap in between links because you wouldn’t necessarily know where to be I think but um I don’t know it’s it’s an interesting concept Sarah I ask what do you guys think of this just I I I I I love the idea of it it sounds like it makes a lot more sense I’m trying to think of if you look at the other side of it what potential dangers would there be having somebody that’s closer to you as far as pinging another computer I mean is there really any downside to this as far as security goes I’m not really well yeah I mean I go ahead I’m not really sure if there’s a downside and security element of it when it comes to peer-to-peer anytime you do like one of those searches not search a little speed test right if you go to the local server it’s way faster than when you go to something across the country so if theoretically it increased speeds that’d be interesting I just wonder about the idea if it’s peer-to-peer I mean theoretically the internet’s supposed to be a bunch distributed machines right so what’s the real difference between this other than the fact that multiple servers are serving you at the same time I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole console well it’s it’s instead of a client server model which is what we have now and and the and the analog being I download from iTunes right and Apple has the servers uh it’s it’s the bitor model it says now there aren’t any servers there’s not one place you just go out there and call for the information and and if you’re saying well how does that work look into bitorrent because that’s exactly how bit torrent Works a Tracker goes out and says who who’s got pieces of this and starts assembling the data yeah but wouldn’t that mean that every user of iTunes would have to download the song and then they would have to have their computers on so they could SE it that would be the way that would work right yeah but if if it’s the entire Internet working then then enough of the internet is on at once that that shouldn’t end up being a problem at least that’s the The Proposal here but you have to get all those people to buy into it so you’ve got that chicken or the egg problem to a certain extent right like so I don’t know it’s really cool though yeah it’s it’s definitely an interesting take and one that I think if done right and there are a lot of questions about encryption and and proper implementation those can be solved whether this organization is solving them or not it’s not something I’ve actually looked into but let’s let’s say you know for argument sake that they can be solved and they are solved this would be a much more robust efficient and Next Generation internet and everybody’s been saying that you know tcpip is kind of Aging we need to come up with something else maybe this is it or maybe something like this this points the way to it I thought it was thought it was worth batting around a little bit let’s go on to the Bing story I don’t quite understand what a hero ad is I as explain it to Hero ad so there’s a pilot program going on B smart search in Windows 8.1 right now there’s no word if this thing is headed to Bing on the web so when you conduct a brand search in Windows 8.1 you’ll be greeted with a large photo and custom links created by an Advertiser instead of a a list of search results so as an example like in this image here you can see if you search for Land Rover in Windows 8.1 you’d get a large image of a Land Rover with custom links like schedule a test drive or request a quote there are other things like Home Depot out there a bunch of different uh advertisers that Bing’s testing with Land Rover Jaguar Home Depot Radio Shack and a bunch of others Microsoft’s not being paid for this right now they’re just testing it out to see what the reaction is like uh during the pilot the ad will be shown to a subset of people searching for the specific names of the companies or brands on Windows 8.1 so if you’re looking for like Ford Explorer you’re not to see this giant Land Rover style ad 44% of Windows 8.1 Searchers in the US who type the specific Search terms will see the new ads and if you want the traditional search results that’ll be to the right side and like I mentioned there’s no word of whether this is going to come to the web at all Tom kit hero ads they seem like a good idea or like a terrible idea well depends on who you know who you’re talking about I mean for for Microsoft and for brand advertisers this is a great idea you know because you can then charge more you know to have that prominent you know image right there or to have that result right there and you know Google was testing this I think a couple weeks ago as well so you know it’s definitely something everyone’s considering you know from a user like would you rather see the individual search results you know maybe but you to me this is kind of an interesting you know evolution of the web and you this is something we’re going to be talking about a lot next week at our our roadmap conference in San Francisco is that design is becoming much more important and the experience of how you use things is much more important than just simply getting the 10 Blue Links that we’ve always been used to getting when we typee something into Google or to Bing so if you actually get a better result from these hero ads you get the information that you want displayed a little bit more prominently like I I don’t know if that’s a bad thing you know we’ll have to we have to kind of see how well they implement it you know how how you know greedy they get with in terms of like how they sell this to advertisers and you know it certainly is like if you’re a Land Rover dealer though or say a Land Rover um mechanic like you’ve just been pushed off the the list right for your local area so that’s that’s maybe something that would worry some people I think the thing that bothers me is and I agree with you Tom that if you’re searching for something like Land Rover maybe it’s the the hero ad gives you the exact information that you’re looking for and so it kind of everybody wins I think the problem I have with it is that it there’s a certain way when you when you when you use a search engine there’s a certain um predictability predictability to the whole experience so you know no matter what you’re searching for it’s kind of going to look a certain way and then you figure out what result applies to you best with ads there’s a lot more of like well let’s just see what they decide to make it look like so even if the information is there there’s a little bit of a it’s pushing a certain style in an advertisement on me so even if it’s relevant that kind of bugs me it’s very similar to that story we had about Google everybody’s calling them banner ads but they were essentially you searched on a term and you got a a page spanning pi picture that went along with that search result as part of a paid sponsorship this is just a different implementation of that and I think what it is is trying to walk that line between you asked for it and the brand wants to have more impact than just you looking for something so that you’re for sure going to go to their controlled message about their brand uh and I think that this has a chance of not being upsetting to people because of that if that if I type in Land Rover and a Land Rover picture comes up I’m not going to go wait a minute why are they pushing Land Rover on me it’s what I was looking for in I was looking for a safari across Africa jeez yeah exactly um I guess the edge cases where maybe I was looking for something and and this comes up and it’s not what I was looking for uh Land Rover being a bad example but let’s say I’m looking for apples and and apple comes up with a big picture of the Apple Store and I’m like no no no I actually wanted the fruit uh that’s a horrible example that probably wouldn’t happen but stuff like that could happen it look like a like an almost like an application more than it doesn’t add you see the giant Land Rover almost like the app so you schedule a test drive and do these other things that you would probably be doing through their either their web app or you be doing through a Windows 8 app so instead of going through that work you have that like when I did a search for Virgin America on Google I get the options with the big ad for virsion America which say book a flight current deals where we fly you already have these context specific actions so to have them customized by The Advertiser might seem a little intrusive that’s already happening under our search results so if you really want to Land Rover or whatever we’re not being paid by Land Rover either by the way we keep saying no it’s just just an example there’s Walt Disney World and Other ads that you saw on that thing if if you want to have that kind of interaction and it’s easier to work with than the actual website of the company that might be a more intriguing proposition to me I’m mean I’m curious about what would happen is if you could if they sell this by keyword so like if you buy so say jaguar buys the Land Rover keyword yeah so if you search for Land Rover and you get a big picture of a jaguar like is that see then that would be a weird experience animal not the car right right exactly all right uh Apple apparently looking into solar charging so you’d never have to plug in your iPad and when you’re outside and you can’t see the screen anyway it’s charging up yeah so there’s a new well it’s not actually a new patent it’s something that was published by the USPTO this week this is something that Apple filed originally back in 2012 for solar power so it’s a power management array that should accept a power adapter and then solar power direct from Gathering devices or traditional Chargers so you you know you either plug in your adapter or you alternatively hook up your computer your MacBook or whatever or another piece of Hardware directly into a solar panel with a simple cord the key to this patent is basically using the inputs that already exist which obviously would make it a lot easier for Apple to be able to roll in I not have to yet again have us you buy a bunch of different cords and Power manag agement in order to accept solar power um yeah it’s composed of power management techniques achievable with existing Hardware but be able to be built using componentry that takes up very little space making it theoretically possible to integrate it into the existing device designs not that Apple really has a problem changing things like ports and and just chucking them out the window pin Connors and that sort of thing but this every once in a while and it always happens when I you know out of juice I don’t have one of my mphi packs for my iPhone and I just think why aren’t there other ways to charge these stupid things particularly when you’re out in the sun I don’t know why this just doesn’t exist already and and Tom Tom C it uh we know from patent applications that sometimes this stuff never even sees the light of day this could be right around the corner this could be years away this could never this could never happen but why I mean why haven’t we figured this out yet well it’s hard right I mean I mean we’re just getting to the point where you know when you look at like solar energy in homes like where that’s starting to become a mainstream thing and you know the price of solar panels has has sky or excuse me has fallen um to the point where it’s like it’s you know it makes sense economically to put these things on houses like getting it down to a mobile device is a you know a tougher proposition and even if you’re like connecting still to some other power adapter that is itself solar powered you know like it’s to me it’s still more of a challenge but it makes a lot of sense doesn’t it I mean they you know especially for us who live in California but um you know it’s kind of in London it’s useless like in Seattle they’re just like ah we don’t care about San Francisco gets foggy too well you got I mean you know how okay yeah you I mean I was there’s still a little power to me yeah uh when the solar is still going to work even with the cloud in the way but the thing is there are a bunch of solar chargers out there that you can buy but they’re just not terribly efficient that’s the big thing can you get a ton of efficiency out of this if the smart cover could provide Power for the iPad if that’s the kind of thing you’re talking about now that’s intriguing to me but if you have to connect it to the mag safe adapter you got to keep this giant plate out that’s the size of a Macbook that makes no sense to me I might as well be carrying a second battery but I can’t put a second battery into an Apple product because there’s no way to do that unless I use the lightning charger the max safe adapter which they’ve patented and you can’t use unless you get a license from them which they don’t give out so it’s just kind of they they could solve the problem in a lot of different ways if solar is a way to do it that’d be great I think battery technologies still are kind of limping along if we can get that faster maybe Wireless power something has to come together at some point but I mean there’s not nothing more beautiful than the idea of just using light light around us in order to charge battery power yeah exactly battery power it batteries are getting better all the time I agree with you it’d be awesome to be able to get like four days of battery life watching movies on my iPad or something like that but I think uh being able to get solar into the mix is is really the ultimate goal solar into a smartwatch these solar laptop chargers exist you can already get uh laptop chargers and they may not go right into the mag safe but you can plug into them uh and but as a said the problem is they’re slow if they could be built in like you said to the cover or even the back of the device so it doesn’t matter that they’re slow they’re just always giving you a little extra juice I think that’s brilliant trickle solar okay I’m for that yeah I just I mean nobody I don’t see anybody ever using any sort of solar charger in any capacity at least with the everyday gadgets that that we’re talking about because there just isn’t a solution yet just needs to be supplemental that’s that’s where I’m hoping this pack right exactly yeah all right let’s fire up the randomizer randomizer kind of hard time finding a good one today got some great uh input from the chat room though and one of the chat room suggestions was Virgin America makes the best Airline safety video ever very timely with today’s news from the FAA got 31% of the vote of the five options I hate this thing you know I don’t like it either I like their old one better they had a little like cartoon before now it’s this dance number oh this will be great the second time you watch it and the third time that’s exactly it I mean the Virgin America the old it was like the you know thear talking like this I remember yeah I mean I’ve been on in a Virgin America flights that that one got old to me as well definitely they needed something new this but this is like it’s like some sort of like a Glee thing I just think it’s really they have a thing with n could you imagine getting onto your flight at like 5 a.m. in the morning and you’re all tired and groggy and [Music] suddenly you’ve been waiting in the terminal for 3 hours you just through a security line that was terribly long that’s fine this be fine you’ll be able to have your ey your iPhone in airplane mode you won’t have to listen to the thing you can have your phones no they force you to listen to that they’ll pipe that in over the thing no but even when you have your device out cuz you don’t put them away anymore right CU now you can have you have your noise cancelling headphones on that’ll be on Al required to pay attention during the safety video I can read it I know they listen could yeah but you know if you’re sleeping they’re not going to wake you up you’re required but nobody I has ever seemed to care all that much I think it’s a very well done dance number don’t get me wrong it’s it’s well produced it looks like a commercial though it looks like a commercial for something it doesn’t it’s not something I would want to see more than once commercial really like to make fun of this seat belt instructions on those Virgin America videos too for the 1% never operated a use that same line in this that’s atast probably a lot of people who have never taken Virgin America flight who are like I just have no idea what’s happening right now yeah go look at this and you’ll feel like you’ve been on one of the flights it does fit with that Club theme that they sort of have let’s see what’s on the calendar Sarah well the narrative clip LIF logging camera has begun shipping it’s form it was formerly called mimoto if you remember it uh in with its former name so yeah life loggers Mount up Jaa 678 called us a bunch of grumpy old ladies because we didn’t like the video it’s probably right get off my plane let’s see what’s incoming incoming message got a voicemail from Gil in San Diego if this is the Gil I’m thinking it is he is also a Red Sox fan so congratulations uh but he’s talking here about the fact that is an occasional traffic judge and the Google Glass ticket story caught his eye hey guys Gil from San Diego um I wanted to comment on the Google Glass uh ticket I actually sit as a traffic judge here in San Diego from time to time um as a service of the Court um the interesting thing about this is this the vehicle code that you was cited under is is for monitor viewing television viewing that type of stuff there’s specific things you’re not allowed to do Under the statute there are exemptions under the statute including navigation and um information that helps the driver be more aware of the road let the heads up display stuff um so the police officer in this case is going to have to and he’ll have the burden of proof to show this that she was using it for a um unlawful purpose which will be hard for him to do since he can’t um testify to what she was doing only she could see it uh the only way I see this working um out for the officer she challenges the ticket is if she told him what she was doing with it so that’ll be the interesting thing but if it was just sitting on her face um she didn’t say anything about it and he assumed that she was using it for an improper purpose I’m not sure that would survive a uh Challenge from her in a traffic withdraw at least based on the information I know hope all is well love the show bye bye suddenly can’t hear you Tom oh sorry I I didn’t want to cough into the mic so she should definitely challenge it thanks appreciate that that that’s really good let’s check in emails sure we got a message from Dale and Indie who says one aspect of Google possibly bringing out a smartwatch based on Google Now that I didn’t hear discussed and I think is a reason why Google will have a leg up in the competition is voice recognition remember that Google Now is voice activated like Siri and you can do lots of things through voice commands imagine how much nicer it would be if you didn’t have to pull your phone out you could just tap your Smartwatch and speak into it to send a text or email add a note to yourself ask it what song is playing or what glossophobia is Google will be able to come uh will be able to create more tightly integrated Technologies on your watch connected to Google Now on your phone than competitors I’m sure they already working on more voice commands for Google Glass the watch would just then be a variation on Google Glass that you wear on your wrist instead of your face just something I realized this morning while pulling my phone out of my pocket to add a note to myself using voice recognition that could definitely work oh yeah Google now is an amazing app I know it’s it’s turned iOS people that I know that I never thought would switch to Android over to Android so it’ be interesting to see it in watch all right that is it for this episode of tech news today thank you Tom kit for joining us as always it’s great that that you actually come all the way up to the studio too I appreciate that yeah it’s easier coming from Oakland Sarah than it is from San Francisco so well you know usually people don’t break down on their motorcycles on the Golden Gate Bridge but today they did just happens happens sometimes you can find Tom’s good works at giga.com anything in particular to let folks know about before we let you go well yeah just that we are having our uh design experience Conference next week as I mentioned uh before Tuesday and Wednesday in San Francisco at the uh year Baba Center for the Arts there’s a lot of cool people there Jack dorsy speaking Tony Fidel of Nest um some folks from Tesla some folks from uh ge and and you know just the whole theme is basically just how design is becoming the most important part of the technology experience yeah it’s a good lineup that is that that’s the lineup I’ve been seeing peering out at me from the side of the site right uh yeah I think so in the for the past week so check it out giga.com thank you Tom don’t forget you can submit a story for us to cover and you can vote other people’s stories down or up at technew today. rd.com uh check it out it’s our subreddit that helps us figure out what stories we’re going to cover each and every day email us TNT twit.tv give us call 260 TNT show we have a YouTube channel if you’d like to subscribe that way you can go to youtube.com/ technew today and of course subscribe to the podcast at twit.tv TNT tomorrow is Friday and we’ll be back with Darren kitchen see you [Music] then