Digital Zone 195: Steamin’ Steve

Posted by Patrick Wiscombe on February 1, 2010 under Digital Zone Podcasts | Be the First to Comment

In this edition of the Digital Zone, we talked about:

Apple to allow VoIP services on the iPhone
Acer says ‘no’ to an iPad competitor
Steve Jobs fires verbal shots
AP and Yahoo sign a new news deal
Google says goodbye to IE6
The cable modem hacker

PODCAST SPONSORS: Please support the companies that make the Patrick Wiscombe podcast network go and take advantage of the special offers only available to our listeners.

Apple is allowing iPhone owners to use Internet calling services over cellular networks. Several companies are now saying Apple now allows their applications to work on the iPhone. VoIP callling has always been possible over Wi-Fi connections but never on the 3G networks. Apple had said before that it blocked the Google Voice app because the program duplicated some of the iPhone’s features, and that it was still studying the application. AT&T has said Apple wasn’t allowed to enable any Internet calling applications that use AT&T’s 3G network without AT&T’s permission. Apple vowed to get VoIP applications into its App Store.

Acer will not build an iPad competitor saying it’s too hard to compete with iTunes and the App Store. Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin said the iPad’s strength lies in the itunes music and video library and said Apple essentially created its own niche with those storefronts and said Acer will focus on netbooks and notebooks.

Wired broke the story on Saturday that said Steve Jobs blasted the corporate culture at Adobe, offered some opinions about the ongoing rivalry between Google and Apple, and took a jab at Sony’s Blu-ray software. Wired reported that when asked about Google at a town hall style meeting with Apple employees, he said that Google wants to kill the iPhone, and he had no intention of letting Google do so and reportedly plans to be aggressive with its updates to the iPhone in a way that Google’s Android platform won’t be able to keep up with. He also purportedly made reference to the next iPhone, which MacRumors described as an “A+ update.” He also reportedly said “teams at Google want to kill us.” During the same meeting, Jobs said Adobe Flash is too slow to be useful and Flash Lite wasn’t advanced enough for the iPhone. Regarding Mac computers, he said the next generation of Mac computers will take Apple to the “next level” and that Blu-ray was a “mess” and will not show up on Macs until sales are stronger for Sony’s HD disc format. He also reportedly said Apple acquired Lala to bring more talent to the iTunes team.

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PODCAST SPONSORS: Please support the companies that make the Patrick Wiscombe podcast network go and take advantage of the special offers only available to our listeners.

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The Associated Press has signed a news licensing deal with Yahoo and said they’re still negotiating to renew its online licensing agreements with Google and Microsoft. Google stopped posting fresh AP content on its Web site in late December. AP has said they need to make more money for news organizations using their stories, photographs and video. Yahoo signed the deal with AP to hold onto its nearly 600 million worldwide users. According to comScore, Yahoo pulls in the biggest U.S. Internet audiences in news, sports and finance. The AP doesn’t want it’s content appearing on unauthorized sites and is testing a system that tracks where its stories are being read. Yahoo pledged to enforce “the strictest standards” to protect the AP’s content. AP’s Chief Executive considered separating its online content into different tiers so exclusive stories might cost more than breaking news reports widely available on the web but didn’t include a tiered clause in the Yahoo deal according to a source speaking on condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure clause in the new contract. Many publishers believe Google has profited unfairly from their newspapers by drawing upon snippets of their stories to attract more traffic to its site so it can sell more of the ads that generate most of its income. Google says it helps drive more traffic to newspaper sites and honors any request from a publisher that doesn’t want to be included in its search engine. Google has said it believes U.S. law allowed it to excerpt AP stories even before it obtained licensing rights.

Google said they will phase out support for IE6 starting in March. The announcement comes more than two weeks after Google reported that its servers had been the target of attacks originating in China. Those attacks targeted a vulnerability in IE 6, for which Microsoft has since issued a fix. Starting March 1, IE6 users who try to access Docs or Sites may find that “key functionality” won’t work properly. According to StatCounter, IE6 has 18 percent market share among browsers.

Federal authorities arrested a 26-year-old man for allegedly selling modified cable modems that enabled free Internet access, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Matthew Delorey allegedly ran a now-defunct Web site called Massmodz.com, where hacked modems were sold. The modems had been modified in order to spoof the device’s MAC (Media Access Control) address. It is possible then to either obtain free Internet access or make it appear that a different modem is obtaining access and allegedly posteda video on YouTube showing how to get free Internet access through modified cable modems.

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PODCAST SPONSORS: Please support the companies that make the Patrick Wiscombe podcast network go and take advantage of the special offers only available to our listeners.

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Tags: current technology news, technology podcast