We Don’t Need Another Hero

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We Don’t Need Another Hero
Number 2681
Broadcast Date FEBRUARY 4, 2016
Episode Length 47:56
Hosts Tom Merritt
Guests Justin Robert Young

It’s fanmail Friday on Thursday! We’ve got great thoughts and expert takes from folks in the audience about Amazon shipping, Apple’s rumored iPhone 5SE, Yahoo prospects and more!

Guest

Headlines

Google launched an update to Android Wear Thursday. It can now use speakers to make calls and listen to messages, and adds a couple wrist gestures. Two expand a card hold your arm in front of you and quickly push down. To go back, hold out your arm and pivot up. To return to the watch face shake your wrist out and in a few times. And voice recognition works more naturally with messaging apps like Hangouts, Telegram, Viber and WhatsApp.
In celebration of it’s 12 anniversary, Facebook is declaring it Friends Day and adding an automatically generated video of you and your friends to your timeline. (You can edit it too if an enemy slips in accidentally). Facebook also notes that degree of separation between two typical Facebook users has decreased from 3.74 degrees in 2011 to 3.57 degrees. Take that Kevin Bacon!
Jurors in the Eastern District of Texas US District Court ordered Apple to pay a combined $625 million for infringing a 1998 patent on secure communications using domain names, which FaceTime is accused of violating and two patents regarding secure communication applied to the iPhone’s handling of VPN. Nevada patent holding company VirnetX won on the VPN patents previously but an appeals court threw out the verdict and ordered the case to be heard again. Apple plans to appeal. Again. Microsoft has paid $23 million to VirnetX to settle a case regarding Skype.
Submitted by melkizedek74
Bethesda announced the new Doom reboot will come out May 13th for the PS4, Xbox One and PC. The last Doom, Doom 3 came out in 2004. The game will have a single player campaign, multiplayer mode and a map editor.
General Growth Properties CEO Sandeep Mathrani felt the need to issue a press release saying that when he said on his earnings call he had heard that Amazon plans to open 300-400 retail stores it “was not intended to represent Amazon's plans.” Meanwhile ReCode says its sources say while Amazon does not have immediate plans to open hundreds of book stores it does have plans to try multiple types of retail shops. Amazon’s Steve Kessel, who returned from sabattical, is leading the retail effort including the bookstore opened last year in Seattle. Amazon does have an ad looking for a bookstore manager in La Jolla or San Diego.
Twitter user Phil Pearlman told TechCrunch his Twitter App is showing a GIF button between the camera and poll icons when composing a tweet and several other Android app users have seen it too. Pearlman says it let him select trending GIFs or ones based on mood. The button disappeared after taking a screen shot of it. Tech Crunch’s Jon Russell reached out to Twitter for comment and received an email saying “Hey Jon here’s our statement” and a GIF of Justin Bieber shrugging.
Canonical, makers of Ubuntu has announced it will sell a 10.1-inch tablet that can go from a full-screen mobile layout to a windowed user interface when you add a keyboard and mouse. The hardware will be BQ’s Aquaris M10 which has a 16GB hard drive, MicroSD slot and 2GB of RAM. You can register to be notified of price and availability at Ubuntu.com/tablet.
The Verge reports GoPro CEO Nick Woodman announced the company will get rid of its cheapest line of cameras and reduce down to three offerings by April. The Hero 4 Black, The Hero 4 Silver and the Hero 4 Session. The new Hero 5 and Karma Drone are still planned for launch this year. Go Pro reported revenue in Q4 dropped 31% over the previous year.
OpenSignal released a report on the State of LTE service in the world. South Korea leads the way in coverage with 97%, followed by Japan, Hong Kong and Kuwait. Korea’s LG U+ has the best coverage for a provider. Singapore has the fastest LTE service at an average of 37 Mbps followed by New Zealand with 29 And Hungary and Israel tied with 28. SingTel in Singapore is the fastest service provider at 40 Mbps. 15 countries and 52 service providers average 20 Mbps or more.
Google’s safe browsing feature has started blocking sites with deceptive content or ads. Examples include fake download buttons, fake upgrade buttons, and popups that ask to call a phone number to remove malware and more.
Submitted by anotherjmartin

Also Sharp might pick Foxconn to buy it and Mozilla is ending Firefox OS for phones, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership was signed in Auckland, New Zealand. And don't fly your drone within 36 miles of the super bowl got it?

Discussion

  • Your Messages!

Pick of the Day

So you can email for free now on jetblue. I have no idea how long this has been going on for.

So I'm going to send you an email.

This is my email. It's not long, but its from the big metal sky god. Thank you oh benevolent sky god, for this internet we are about to receive. Forgive us our missing packets, and deliver us from latency.

Again. Free sky email... from the sky
Submitted by Joe the Pilot

Messages

Your discussion with Scott yesterday about the Fitbit Alta naturally bled over to the state of the Apple Watch, and how its failed to displace the stand alone fitness tracker market as some had speculated. This leads me into the fundamental failing of Apple's approach to the watch (as far as something that dominates an emerging market can be said to fail). A lot of Apple's secret sauce is that they are excellent at having their existing products train and condition people for their new ones, the iPod trained people with iTunes and the expectation to have a digital library on them leading into the iPhone, the transition from iPhone to iPad is virtually seamless. Even the new iPad Pro I believe to be conditioning a transition to their general computing future. But the watch has had nothing to really blaze the way for it. I think Apple would have been better served to emulate the iPod model, introduce a more single use and cross-platform fitness tracker, dominate that market like they did with MP3 players, to then setup people for a more general use wearable, one which already has a use case established by the legacy product. Apple is generally brilliant at consumer education, but less so with the Watch.
Sent by Rich from Lovely Cleveland


Hi Tom. Just wanted to pitch in my 2 cents in regards to amazon transportation. I drive for a big brown logistics firm and we do a lot of business with amazon but most of the trucks and trailers that are at the distribution centers are not FedEx or UPS but rather a variety of 3pl shippers and such. Most people think UPS or FedEx for shipping but they are only the end point in the logistics chain. Most products hit a few warehouses and distribution points after getting off the boat before they even know what a FedEx or UPS trailer looks like. Seems to me that amazon is looking to increase its efficiency for its distribution needs within its network of centers. No hard evidence but for the amount of volume I see, that's what makes sense to me.
Sent by Joel in sunny and snowy Reno


Tom – I’m not sure why the tech community is so flabbergasted about Amazon going physical. It seems to me that they are taking a natural growth path. In their era, Sears, J.C. Penny, and Montgomery Wards are just 3 big examples of companies that had huge catalog and physical businesses running side-by-side. Direct-ship to customer or in-store pickup were long time features. The only thing that is different is the absence of a paper catalog and the communication technique. It sounds to me like Jeff Bezos is taking a cue from the past.
Sent by George


Last May, Jason Calacanis was on TWIT and discussed Hyperloop. He said his is an investor and personal friend of Elon Musk. During the discussion he said the primary use of Hyperloop would be trans oceanic freigh
Sent by Bill in Huntsville


One night my son brought one of his books out of his room and started reading it to me and I wanted to capture this wonderful moment. I started filming the moment horizontally, because video is horizontal. Then I realized that if I were taking a picture of him, I'd do it vertically, because he's subject of the picture, not the lovely backdrop of my hallway, so as he turned the page I turned my phone and took a step forward. Now instead of having a video that was 2/3 carpet and 1/3 him reading, I had a full framed video of him reading, where I could actually see his pride as he did it. Why was I so stuck on horizontal videos?

Just as a good photographer must learn to recognize when portrait is the correct orientation for a photograph, videographers must now learn to recognize when portrait is the correct orientation for a video. Because of this, I am unapologetically pro-portrait video (when used properly).
Sent by Jeff, Knoxville TN


HiTom.

Wow with all the Yahoo! turmoil it reminds me of the San Francisco ballpark, were on the outfield fence is the yard marker of 404 right next to the Yahoo! logo which always made me smile when I see it watching Dodgers/Giants games on tv.

But seriously. I've always thought they made a mistake by not becoming a content provider and selling the rest, because I believed they have excellent media content which is used and cited by many media outlets included yourself. And if they did go this way I'd believe they could have become a content king even the king of them all.

For some reason I had the feeling that Marissa Meyer wouldn't make it past August.

Best to all
Sent by Failed Access Memory


Tom,

Just listened to DTNS 2680 and the comments on more people will have phones than electricity. I really appreciate that you highlight stories such as this. As I wrote earlier, I have been working in Ghana where we just finished our third solar microgrid bringing electricity to a community of about 15 households.

Most of the community members did have cell phones, but prior to having electricity, they had to take their phones to the closest town that had electricity and paid a fee for charging their phone with another business. This requires quite a long walk (or if you are lucky hitching a ride) just to charge your phone. Also, there were some complaints that sometimes batteries got switched (an older one for a newer one.) There are also more small solar kits available that have small solar panels with a little battery that can then be used to charged a cell phone. These are still though relatively expensive. When visiting one of our newly electrified customers, we found out she was charging phones for friends from other nearby villages that have not yet been electrified.

What has enabled our business model, is that our customers now pay for the solar electricity via their cell phones at the same rate they would pay for electricity if the utility were to extend the grid out to them. We are able to use the cell network for data collection, billing, and also to text message our customers if their account is low. I do see most communities getting first cell phones and then electricity with cell service enabling companies such as ours. Just as with cell service eliminating the need for land line phones, we see a new paradigm of small connected grids that have sustainable generation being built eliminating the need for construction of large generators and large transmission lines to get electricity to many of these places (especially to rural locations).

P.S. You can find out more about our company at http://www.energicitycorp.com
Sent by Joe


And a note of thanks to Assistant Professor of Finance Brian Henry of Benedictine College for taking time to do an analysis of Facebook's earnings call for us. It's up on the blog at dailytechnewsshow.com
Sent by Brian Henry, Assistant Professor of Finance at Benedictine College

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Preceded by:
"Amazon Gets Physical, Physical"
We Don’t Need Another Hero
Followed by:
"Just assume it ends in doom"