Digital Zone 200: I Do Declare

Posted by Patrick Wiscombe on March 15, 2010 under Digital Zone Podcasts | Be the First to Comment

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

iPad delayed until April 3
iPhone addiction
Windows Phone 7 breaks from the past
Amazon ditches Colorado
TiVO prevails over Dish…again

The iPad has been delayed until April 3rd, slightly later than the “late March” time frame they announced on January 27. One analyst said Apple was having an “unspecified production problem.” U.S. customers will be able to begin placing orders for the iPad on Apple’s Web site on March 12. Apple says the touch-screen iPad will include 12 new applications designed especially for the device.

The iPhone is addicting, according to a new Stanford University survey. The survey was administered to 200 students with iPhones, 70 percent of whom had owned their iPhones for less than a year. The most interesting trend was how quickly the iPhone became an indispensable part of the students’ lifestyles, and how many of them openly acknowledged they would be lost without it. Nearly 85 percent of the iPhone owners used the phone as their watch, and 89 percent used it as their alarm clock. Seventy-five percent admitted to falling asleep with the iPhone in bed with them, and 69 percent said they were more likely to forget their wallet than their iPhone when leaving in the morning. When asked to rank their dependence on the iPhone on a scale of one to five – five being addicted and one being not at all addicted – 10 percent of the students acknowledged full addiction to the device, 34 percent ranked themselves as a four on the scale, and only 6 percent said they weren’t addicted at all. Among those who didn’t consider themselves completely addicted, 32 percent expressed worry that they would become addicted someday. Fifteen percent of those surveyed said the iPhone was turning them into a media addict; 30 percent called it a “doorway into the world”; 25 percent found the phone “dangerously alluring” and 41 percent said losing their iPhone would be “a tragedy.” Three percent of students said they don’t let anyone touch their iPhone; another 3 percent have named their iPhone; 9 percent have patted their iPhone and 8 percent admitted that they have at some time thought “My iPod is jealous of my iPhone.” Many iPhone owners reported complaints from friends and family about how much time they spent on their devices. In the survey, 7 percent of students said they had a roommate or partner who actually felt abandoned because of the student’s involvement with the iPhone. Seventy-four percent said the iPhone also made them feel cool.

—————————————————————————————————————–

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.

——————————————————————————————————————

Microsoft has said its new software for smart phones, Windows Phone 7 series, is a “clean break” with the past. They said the news phones won’t run any applications written for older versions of Microsoft’s phone software. The company said getting rid of support for older applications was necessary to make the new operating system as powerful and user-friendly as possible. The old apps were designed for phones that came with styluses while the new OS is designed for touch screens.

TiVo Inc. prevailed again against Dish Network over patents for digital video recorders. A federal appeals court cleared the way for TiVo to collect hundreds of millions of dollars. TiVo said the decision, if it stands, would let it collect at least $300 million from Dish — about $100 million in damages and interest, and the rest in contempt sanctions that TiVo already has been awarded. That would be on top of about $100 million in damages that Dish had already paid TiVo in earlier litigation. TiVo has sued AT&T and Verizon charging them with infringing on certain DVR patents. At issue is a TiVo patent on technology for storing and retrieving video on DVRs, which lets viewers pause, rewind and replay live TV. Dish said they redesigned technology that it said did not infringe on TiVo’s patent. But the U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas, disagreed and ordered Dish to pay TiVo additional damages. Dish said in a statement that it’s disappointed in the ruling but gratified that one of the three appellate judges sided with its position and issued a dissenting opinion saying Dish has made a good faith effort at a redesign.

Amazon cut affiliate ties with Colorado online businesses because of a new state law aimed at getting out-of-state, online retailers to collect sales tax. Colorado has at least 4,200 such businesses accounting for about 5,000 jobs, according to Performance Marketing Association. Some of the Colorado’s business totally depend on Amazon’s affiliate marketing program while others get only about 10 percent of their revenue. In an e-mail to affiliates, Amazon said the new sales tax regulations were burdensome and unlike rules in any other state. Amazon has cut off affiliates in two other states that passed online sales tax laws, Rhode Island and North Carolina. Those states said online retailers had a presence there through affiliates and therefore had to pay sales tax. The law in Colorado says retailers can either collect sales tax or send customers an annual statement telling them how much they spent and how much sales tax they should pay the state on their own. The state would be able to force retailers to turn over customer sales records to enforce the law.

—————————————————————————————————————–

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.

——————————————————————————————————————

Tags: best podcasts, technology news