Digital Zone 206: RAID!

Posted by Patrick Wiscombe on May 3, 2010 under Tech Podcasts | Be the First to Comment

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

Police Raid Gizmodo editor’s house
Apple could buy processor maker
Apple to close Lala.com
The Apple developers conference
Full Flash support coming to Android 2.2
HP buys Palm for $1.4 billion

Police have identified the person who obtained the prototype iPhone 4G, but that may or may not be the person who sold it to Gizmodo. The San Jose Business Journal reported that the investigators “identified and interviewed the person who took the phone” from the German bar where Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who lost the iPhone, was celebrating his birthday. The paper reported that an outside counsel for Apple, as well as the engineer who misplaced the phone reported the incident as a theft, but according to San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney the incident has not been treated as a crime. The investigation had been put on hold to determine whether Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, has the right to invoke California’s shield law protecting journalists. Police seized four computers and two servers, plus several external hard drives, from Gizmodo editor Jason Chen last Friday night. According to a search warrant posted on Gizmodo.com, the computers may contain photographs of Apple’s “prototype 4G iPhone,” as well as email pertaining to its purchase, call records, and research on Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who purportedly misplaced the device. Chen said in a post on the Gizmodo website that he and his wife returned from having dinner out on Friday to find police searching their home. The paper’s source also disputed the sale terminology, claiming that the $5,000 was something akin to a finder’s fee. Wired also said that it had received an email from an individual on March 28 regarding the prototype iPhone, but “did not follow up on the exchange after the tipster made a thinly veiled request for money.” So far, Engadget, Wired, and Gizmodo have acknowledged receiving contact from someone shopping pictures of the iPhone.

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PODCAST SPONSORS: The Digital Zone is sponsored by Callpod. Your electronic devices are power hungry, charge all of them at the same time using the Callpod.

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ARM Holdings, the company that creates the processors for most of the world’s mobile phones, including the iPhone and iPad, is now rumored to be sold to Apple. According to the London Evening Standard, ARM Holdings could be acquired for around $8 billion. Apple could pay cash for the company because they have $40 billion in cash reserves. An acquisition would give Apple greater control over the development of mobile processors and Apple could deny competitors access to ARM’s technology, including Android phones.

Apple is shutting down Lala.com, the online music service they purchased late last year and is rumored to be announcing a web version of iTunes. However, it’s being reported that Apple has not talked to music executives about its plans and new music licensing deals haven’t been set up. Several months before Apple bought Lala, the company demoed a working, but unapproved iPhone application that streamed songs instantly to the phone after a user spent 10 cents per song to house them in a digital locker on a server. The 10 cents is credited back if a customer buys a higher-quality, permanent download. Last week Rhapsody unveiled an update to its iPhone application to allow users to play such music even when they lack cell phone coverage. For a $10 monthly fee, users could save any song from a catalog of 9.5 million to their device. Apple is in the process of building a 500,000 square-foot facility in Maiden, N.C..

Apple will host its annual developers conference starting June 7 and is expected to unveil the latest version of the iPhone and could announce iPhone will become available on Verizon’s network in 2011. Apple will also host their first iPad development sessions.

ZDNet is reporting when Android 2.2 ships it will support Flash and should be available around May 19. In additional to full flash support, it will include faster “JIT” (just in time) compiler, automatic updates for installed apps, an FM radio, and support for flashing colored lights on the trackball of Android handsets.

Palm has agreed to be bought out by Hewlett-Packard for about $1.4 billion in cash. The deal will see HP pay $5.70 for every Palm common share and certain preferred shares. Also included in the $1.4 billion price tag are payments for additional preferred shares, warrants and employee restricted stock units. HP sell their iPaq phone but it has one-tenth of 1 percent of the worldwide cell phone market last year, according to IDC and shipped 100,000 units last year.

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PODCAST SPONSORS: The Digital Zone is sponsored by Callpod. Your electronic devices are power hungry, charge all of them at the same time using the Callpod.

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